Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/2140
Title: | Institutional Self Evaluation: A pre-requisite for External Quality Audit |
Authors: | Teshome, Tesfaye |
Keywords: | Institutional Self Evaluation, Quality assurance, Ethiopia |
Issue Date: | Aug-2007 |
Publisher: | ST.MARY’S UNIVERSITY |
Abstract: | The Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA) is mandated to assure the
quality of public and private Higher Education in Ethiopia. Quality assurance agencies
use the term ‘quality assurance’ to denote different practices. Each practice serves
different purposes to suit the national contexts in which agencies operate and the purposes
they desire to serve. Although the approaches differ to suit the national contexts, the basic
essentials are similar and have the following common features: they base their quality
assessment on predetermined and transparent criteria; they use an institutional self
evaluation and an external review; they emphasize public disclosure of the outcomes and
declare the outcomes valid for a specific period of time.
Most often quality assurance agencies follow a three stage process in their attempt to
assure quality. The first stage requests higher education institutions to prepare a self-evaluation
report and provide relevant information on the quality of educational programs
they offer related to predetermined and well publicized criteria. The second stage focuses
on a site visit by a team of external quality auditors to validate the self-evaluation report.
The third stage is the final decision by the agency on the review team’s recommendations
and disclosure of the audit outcome. To that end, the Higher Education Relevance and
Quality Agency has reviewed experiences of quality agencies in selected countries and
developed and publicized criteria for quality assurance in HEIs in Ethiopia.
To date seven public universities have carried out and submitted self evaluation reports to
the agency and two universities have been audited. These are important steps in the
development of quality assurance for higher education in the country and are learning
experiences for all concerned. The agency and all HEIs are expected to continue to work
hard to improve the quality of the self-evaluation reporting and in providing relevant
information for judging the quality of institutions and their programs.
This paper describes the basic elements of the first stage of HERQA’s quality assurance
system: a self-evaluation report of a Higher Education institution as a pre-requisite for an
external quality audit. It outlines the purposes of an institutional self-evaluation, deals with
the quality focus areas, the procedures to be followed for self-evaluation, the self-evaluation
report and its use for quality enhancement. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/2140 |
Appears in Collections: | Proceedings of the 5th National Conference on Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) in Ethiopia
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