A Contemporary Analysis of the Right to Education. The Function of “Purpose” as an Indicator of Quality Education at HEIs

Ensuring access to quality education is the main purpose of SDG 4; however, how quality is defined and conceptualised in higher education remains unclear. Many researchers analysing quality assurance and ranking systems in HE point out a lack of standardized practice in the selection of indicators or criteria for assessing quality in HE. Historical accounts of the development of HEIs suggest that ensuring quality in HE is not a phenomenon of recent years, rather a concern for centuries that will continue to garner attention. This thesis analyzes quality in education through the lenses of human rights perspectives on the right to education, as well as sociology, and economic theories of education. The methodological approach used is a comparative analysis between UNESCO–OECD indicators as benchmarks for quality education, against a list of rankings on one hand and quality assurance indicators on the other, to determine congruence with the right to education and more specifically to quality education. The results suggest that incongruence exists between the indicators, and “purpose” is proposed as an indicator that can bridge the gap.