Browsing by Author "Bruk, Assmelash"

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    Quality Assurance And Accreditation Of Private Higher Education Institutions (Pheis) (Assessing the Role and Practices of the Ministry of Education)
    (A.A.U, 2004-06) Bruk, Assmelash; Dr. G., K.Murthi
    The increasing demand for quality private higher education by government, students and society entails that PHEls now face similar pressure that the production industries and other business sectors have been facing for decades. While quality can mean different things to different people, in the context of higher education it particularly refers to a judgment about the level of goal achievement and the value and worth of that achievement. It is also a judgment about the degree to which activities or outputs have desirable characteristics, according to some norm or against particular specified criteria or objectives. The main issues in the quality debate about higher education in many countries are the maintenance and improvement of levels of teaching, learning, research and scholarship; improvement in the quality and adaptability of graduates; how to define and measure quality; management approaches likely to improve outcomes from higher education institutions; the use of benchmarking and performance indicators; and how to convince stakeholders that institutions and systems are doing a competent job in ensuring quality outputs. Based on this, wide differences are observed among countries in their approach to quality assurance. One typical approach has been the accreditation of institutions or professional programs. Accreditation refers to a process of external review which enables higher education programs or institutions to be recognized or certified as meeting appropriate standards. Compared with the past, the new approach to quality assurance and accreditation is largely concerned about improvement and renewal as contrasted to emphasis on input requirements, academic standards, and accountability concerns. This paper particularly tries to describe and report on existing guidelines and criteria for quality assurance procedures and the accreditation system used by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education (MoE) in the assessment and review of PHEls primarily engaged in business fields. As a base for comparison the study draws lessons from international experiences, review of relevant literature, and views and responses obtained from local private providers of higher education. The findings of the study indicate that quality assurance and accreditation efforts of the Ministry tend to predominantly stress on accountability over concern for improvement and renewal. In this respect it has been suggested that quality is about a change in culture, which involves a slow process of evolution. The dominant delegated accountability approach to quality that emphasizes procedures and list of standards is always likely to lead to degree of skepticism about quality that would be counter productive in the development of a quality culture with in the private institutions.