Higher education is a critical element of the American economy, because of both its benefits and its costs to individuals and taxpayers. Yet we know very little about the relationships between the things colleges and universities do and the resources they need to do them. Currently, shrinking public support and increasing tuition make it urgent…

Quality assurance of higher education is made up of two parts: internal quality assurance (IQA) and external quality assurance (EQA). Both belong to a union of the coexistence and balance of yin and yang. But in reality there exists a paradox of "confusion of quality assurance (QA) subject consciousness, singularity of social QA and lack of QA…

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…

Accreditation is a process of external quality review used by higher education education to scrutinize colleges, universities, and educational programs for quality assurance and quality improvement. In the United States, accreditation is carried out by private, nonprofit organizations designed for this specific purpose. Institutions and…

For higher education reform, most decision-makers aspire to achieving a higher participation rate and a respectable degree of excellence with diversity at the same time. But very few know exactly how. External quality assurance is a fair basis for differentiation but there can be doubt and resistance in some quarters. Stakeholder interests differ…

Accreditation is a process of external quality review created and used by higher education to scrutinize colleges, universities, and programs for quality assurance and quality improvement. Accreditation in the United States is more than a hundred years old, emerging from concerns to protect public health and safety and to serve the public…

This paper gives an overview of the Indian technical education system with regard to both its quantitative and qualitative scenario and upholds the value of accreditation in quality improvement and quality assurance of educational programmes. The paper presents a comparison of accreditation systems being followed in some important countries,…

China's evaluation of undergraduate teaching work at institutions of higher education began in 1994 and has proceeded for thirteen years now. The evaluations have had a positive effect in such aspects as promoting teaching, reform, and administration and improving quality at institutions of higher education and have been widely acknowledged in…

Worldwide, economic and other factors are pressing institutions of higher education to assess student learning to insure that graduates acquire the skills and competencies demanded in the 21st century. This paper summarises the status of undergraduate student learning outcomes assessment at accredited colleges and universities in the United…

Accountability, which is closely related to evaluation of efficiency, effectiveness, and performance, requires proving that higher education has achieved planned results and performance in an effective manner. Highlighting efficiency and effectiveness and emphasizing results and outcomes are the basic characteristics of accountability in higher…

Purpose: This paper aims to develop and empirically test the performance-based higher education service quality model. Design/methodology/approach: The study develops 67-item instrument for measuring performance-based service quality with a particular focus on the higher education sector. Scale reliability is confirmed using the Cronbach's alpha.…

This report examines the contribution of self-evaluation to internal review processes in Scotland's colleges. It identifies the range of methodologies used by colleges, what makes these effective and what needs to improve further. It explores in particular, the extent to which self-evaluation has a positive impact on learners' experiences. The…

The Commonwealth of Learning is proud to partner with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Higher Education and UNESCO to produce this "Quality Assurance Toolkit for Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes". The Toolkit has been prepared with three features. First, it is a generic document on quality assurance, complete with a…

E-learning in the European Higher Education Area has stampeded its way to the foreground of the Quality Assurance (QA) forum, and has become a key issue among quality assurance agencies and institutions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Because internet-based learning is currently such a relevant topic, there is a dire need for the…

This article outlines a methodology for characterising features of programme-level assessment environments so that the relationship between features of the assessment environment and students' learning response can be studied. The methodology was developed through the detailed case study of nine undergraduate degree programmes: one in each of…