A prActicAl guide Benchmarking in european Higher education

Once the data have been collected and compiled into comparative reports,
the analysis of gaps in performance and differences between institutions will
serve as an objective basis on which to improve processes, either at the level
of individual higher education institutions or as a collective exercise within
the partnership. Depending on the level and focus of the exercise, there will
be different implications for strategic goal setting and actions plans to
achieve superior performance within higher education institutions. It is
important to bear in mind the different national and cultural contexts which
will affect results.
In the context of quality assurance in Australia, Benchmarking: A manual
for Australian universities, McKinnon (1999) identified important aspects
for university life and ways to benchmark them, providing 67 benchmarks
in 9 areas of university activity, i.e. governance, planning and management,
external relationships, financial and physical infrastructure,
learning and teaching, student support, research, library and information
services, internationalisation and staffing. The manual identified good
practices and how to assess achievements in terms of outcome, i.e.
lagging, drivers and learning.
See http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/otherpub/bench.pdf
In 2006, the DentEd IIII EU-funded thematic network under the auspices
of the Association for dental Education in Europe produced a report and
series of toolkits to assist dental schools in developing appropriate
internal quality assurance systems in line with existing faculty/university
QA systems, as a way to respond to the Bologna Process and the harmonisation
of dental education in Europe.
The toolkit provided guidelines to work with programme auditors, selfassessment
templates (curriculum, faculty staff, students, facilities and
linking to professional associations) and examples of good practices for
quality assurance. See under “downloads” on http://www.adee.org
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