Evaluation policy has been identified as an important means of shaping and influencing organizational evaluation practice, yet, to date, little empirical research has been conducted to deepen our understanding of this relationship. The purpose of this study was to illuminate evaluation policy's role in leveraging organizational capacity to do and…

In Colorado, a grassroots accountability and continuous improvement network is uniting far-flung rural school districts--with members as many as 400 miles apart--in a collaborative effort to address the unique needs of Colorado's rural students. As in other states, Colorado rural districts must deal with funding disparities, isolation, education…

This paper provides a brief overview of the current state of federal accountability and the need for change, and a summary of the landscape of state accountability reforms through funding structures for public colleges and universities. It explores key questions or decision points that must be addressed in designing a federal accountability system…

The higher education institutes aspire to gain reputation of quality having accreditation from internationally recognized awarding bodies. The accreditation leads and provides quality assurance for education. Although distance learning becomes a significant part of the education system in the 21st century, there is still a common opinion that the…

Globalization in the 21st century has brought innumerable challenges and opportunities to universities and countries. Universities are primarily concerned with how to ensure the quality of their education and how to boost their local and global competitiveness. The pressure from both international competition and public accountability on…

The origins of institutional effectiveness are traced, its evolution within community colleges is described, the use of the term "institutional effectiveness" is analyzed, and a practical, operational definition of the term is presented. The author hopes that this definition and the discussion in this article prove useful to community college…

The purpose of this article is to identify key ways in which program review provides information and documentation demonstrating that a community college is effective. This is accomplished through both the program review process (the means by which reviews are conducted) and the product (program review reports and supporting evidence). The various…

Policymakers, administrators, and institutional researchers should recognize the critical stakeholders in the area of institutional effectiveness at the community college, their differences in perceptions about institutional effectiveness, and ways to negotiate these differences in perception. This article identifies the different stakeholders in…

This paper analyzes the effects of a higher education accountability system in Brazil. For each discipline, colleges were assigned a grade that depended on the scores of their students on the ENC, an annual mandatory exam. These grades were then disclosed to the public and colleges were rewarded or penalized based on them. I find that the ENC had…

Assessing the quality of undergraduate student learning continues to be a priority in U.S. postsecondary education. Although variations in outcome assessment practices have long been suspected, they have not been systematically documented. To follow up the 2009 National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) report on institutional…

Heightened national goals for degree attainment in the United States means increasing prominence for community colleges, which entails greater scrutiny in the form of accountability. Technology and a new generation of accountability measures appropriate to the distinctive community college mission are available to meet this challenge. This article…

The authors review the unique characteristics of nonprofit organizations and explain how nonprofit organizations play a prominent role in providing today's public services. The authors describe how the field of professional evaluation developed in response to government performance-based management initiatives, noting that recent efforts at the…

This practical guide to outcomes-based assessment in student affairs is designed to help readers meet the growing demand for accountability and for demonstrating student learning. The authors offer a framework for implementing the assessment of student learning and development and pragmatic advice on the strategies most appropriate for the…

The emergence of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for Quality Assurance has been seen as an important step towards realising the European Higher Education Area by creating more transparency and accountability in the area of quality assurance. The ESG also include standards as to how quality assurance agencies should be reviewed. In a…

This report is a product of an European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) Workshop "Assessing educational quality: Knowledge production and the role of experts" hosted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) in Oslo in February, 2008. The workshop gathered representatives from higher…