A System for Quality Improvement in Higher Education

Effectiveness and correct procedure have come into focus at institutions of higher education. Quality becomes a strategic factor for competition and cooperation among universities. A quality-aware organization is not created spontaneously—it requires a committed, visible leadership that promotes the relevant issues. It is important to engage the staff in work on quality evaluation. Furthermore, the top management of the university should be evaluated against university objectives. The quality status of universities must be evaluated on an ongoing basis, but the evaluation perspectives needs to be changed.

Interest from the superiors' point of view should focus on whether and how departments follow up their quality. A workable model for this type of assessment can be based on three (or rather four) dimensions. In the first one the rector can expect departments to report on how they are implementing measures to ensure the quality of their work. The second dimension is to investigate to what extent departments have actually applied those approaches in daily routine; this is known as deployment. The third dimension implies that each department is held accountable for the results of this application. The relevant question here is what trends or levels can be presented relative to internal goals or external benchmarks. From the results, it is necessary to go back and assess in the first dimension again. The question in this (fourth) phase is how the people responsible for the evaluation will validate the relevance of their approach and deployment.