Assuring Quality in Chinese IT Education

China is experiencing unprecedented economic growth within a context of globalisation and the emergence of a global knowledge economy. This growth is fuelled by developments in Information Technology (IT) and high quality IT services. Skilled industry- oriented IT graduates are needed who will be immediately productive in an internationally competitive environment. Any barriers to providing such graduates must be removed through national educational reforms, driven by research-based best practice, and informed by international experience. In response to the challenges faced by China in producing industry- oriented IT graduates the EMERSION project (Education to Meet the Requirements of the Software Industry and Beyond) was established in 2003, as a partnership project between the Dublin Institute of Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, and the University of Wolverhampton, funded under the European Union ASIA-Link programme to develop, implement, and evaluate an industry-oriented IT education model and system in China. A key aspect of this model is its quality assurance system which is an integration of best practice from the quality assurance systems of the partner institutions. This paper describes the motivation for introducing a quality assurance system in education, describes EMERSION and the motivation for the EMERSION quality assurance model, and then describes the quality assurance model and its role in ensuring sustainability and evolution of the education model in the face of globalisation. The importance of the research described in this paper is that it provides an example of successful international co-operation between researchers, educators, and policy-makers, guided by research-based best practice, to achieve a common understanding of quality issues in industrially focused education. Government policy-makers, educators, and industrialists developing industry-oriented education models will gain insight into the issues faced when educating current and future generations of IT professionals to