‘We’re stubborn enough to create our own world’: how programme directors frame higher education quality in interdependence

Little is known about how the complex notion of higher education quality is understood and (strategically) handled by a specific group of key university actors: directors of educational programmes. A framing analysis of in-depth interviews was conducted to explore how bachelor-programme directors in Dutch social science departments understand and enact quality, while maintaining multiple commitments. The analysis revealed that directors share a non-problematic, understanding of quality as realising a good educational programme, programme. They enact different quality frames while upholding their programme and position but face issues in practice. Balancing different goals and interests is a recurrent strategy. The directors’ room for manoeuvre to enact their quality views, however, is position-dependent. Whereas some directors can play it out in any direction, others experience responsibility without power. Quality’s plasticity provides the flexibility to maintain the idea of improvement, even in limiting circumstances, while preventing structural changes at a more fundamental level.