Graduate higher education coverage has expanded worldwide due to globalisation, the demand for more specialised human resources and online education, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This article validates an evaluation model of academic service quality in graduate studies that integrates HiEduQual instruments with the Kano method for…

Student success has multiple meanings; however, the quantitative bias prevalent in the northwest American and Western Canadian postsecondary education sector restricts how student success is defined and measured. Standardised measures of student success assume that the student experience is homogeneous and risk the implementation of policies and…

This study probes the execution of internal quality assurance "vis-à-vis" learning outcome assessments in Japanese and Taiwanese universities. To this end, it applies Elken and Stensaker's theoretical framework of 'quality work' to ascertain the following: (1) how universities build internal quality assurance; (2) what learning outcome…

Quality is a multidimensional and transversal concept also in the field of higher education. This and other considerations revealed some problems during application of quality principles to study programmes, emerged from the first accreditation experience in Italy. The objective of this article is to provide a simple self-assessment tool for…

In 2017, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research implemented a project to develop curriculum guidelines for all health and social care programmes. The modified RAND/UCLA appropriateness method used by the group developing guidelines for programmes in prosthetics and orthotics is described. The method resulted in 126 learning outcomes that…

Starting from the main objective of external quality assurance (EQA) procedures to assure and improve the quality of higher education institutions and its provisions, the paper examines expected impacts of EQA procedures on institutions from the perspectives of three European quality assurance agencies. First, the paper examines the expected…

In Australia, a review of the higher education sector is usually triggered by a change in government leadership, followed by the development and implementation of the government's response in the form of a reform package to enact change. The aim of this study was to conduct an independent evaluation of a large-scale national government policy…

In this paper the current national legislations, the quality assurance approaches and the activities of impact analysis of three quality assurance agencies from Romania, Spain and Germany are described from a strategic perspective. The analysis shows that the general methodologies (comprising, for example, self-evaluation reports, peer reviews,…

This paper reports on methodological approaches, experiences and expectations referring to impact analysis of quality assurance from the perspective of three higher education institutions (students, teaching staff, quality managers) from Germany, Finland and Romania. The presentations of the three sample institutions focus on discussing the core…

The scientific performance of 64 political science, sociology and marketing departments in Romania is investigated with the aid of the "g"-index. The assessment of departments based on the "g"-index shows, within each of the three types of departments that make up the population of the study, a strong polarisation between top…

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the debate on the notion of quality in higher education with particular focus on "objectifying through articulation" the assessment of quality by professional experts. The article gives an overview of the differentiations of quality as used in higher education. It explores a substantial…

The article explores the organisational impact of evaluation and control mechanisms on universities from the point of view of accountability. Three case studies are analysed with the aim of understanding the significance of these systems both at corporate governance level and in relation to their influence on the behaviour of the academic staff.…

This paper develops a theoretical framework that could facilitate the application of the Autovalutazione, Valutazione periodica, Accreditamento (AVA) method in Italian universities, trying to simplify the use of this approach, and to cover the existing gap between Italy and others European academic institutions. The new competitive environment in…

The accountability versus improvement debate is an old one. Although being traditionally considered dichotomous purposes of higher education quality assessment, some authors defend the need of balancing both in quality assessment systems. This article goes a step further and contends that not only they should be balanced but also that other…

The aim of this research is to present a new quality assurance model (5Qs) and to examine the major factors affecting students' perception of cumulative satisfaction. The model includes behavioural dimensions of student satisfaction. The factors included in this cumulative summation are technical, functional, infrastructure, interaction and…