University Evaluations and Different Evaluation Approaches: A Finnish Perspective

Evaluation of higher education can be described a species of its own with only few connections with other fields of evaluation. When considering the future developments in higher education evaluation (quality assurance), it is useful to observe its similarities and differences with various evaluation approaches in other than higher education evaluation. The purpose of the paper is to consider the place of Finnish university evaluations on a more general “evaluation map”, by comparing them with other evaluation approaches, especially utilisation-focused evaluation, realistic evaluation and empowerment evaluation.