Handbook for Quality Assurance in Higher Education The ... - TCU

For assessing our quality, we need a yardstick or benchmark. An absolute yardstick, ready
for use does not exist. This means we have to look for criteria and standards that can be
used. In some cases, the criteria and standards are formulated by one of the stakeholders.
Governments often have formulated criteria and standards in the framework of accreditation.
In other cases, employers or the profession have formulated standards. When there are no
pre-formulated requirements, it is up to the university to decide upon the standards, taking
into account international developments (benchmarking).
In many cases, the externally formulated so-called standards are often more criteria than
standard. A criterion can be seen as a specific aspect, decisive for the quality. For example,
the criterion can be: “the university has a clearly formulated mission and vision”. Or “the
computer facilities must be adequate”. A standard gives the level that a criterion must meet.
Sometimes, a government or an accrediting body can give a clear quantitative figure, e.g. the
number of computers per student must be X. In most cases, the level of the criterion will be
described as must be adequate, but what adequate is, is not formulated. In the case of selfassessment
by a university, the university has to find out what adequate means. This can be
done by a university carrying out a comparison between itself and others that are in the same
situation (e.g. benchmarking). In the case of accreditation or external quality assessment, it is
left to the group of experts to decide if something is adequate or not.
The quest for quality is not an easy one, especially since there is no absolute quality or objective
quality. Nevertheless, we expect higher education to assure its quality, to demonstrate
its quality and to have its quality assessed by outsiders. And this is happening all over the
world. The National Council for Higher Education of Uganda, the Tanzania Commission for
Universities and the Commission for Higher Education of Kenya have formulated criteria and
standards, for an institution, as well as for the core activities of the institution: Teaching/learning,
research and community outreach. Comparing the documents from the three agencies,
we see that those standards and criteria have a lot in common, and are also looking around
in the world we see that they are in line with what is going on in other countries. Everyone is
looking at more or less the same aspects for assessing quality. In the United States, Europe,
South America, Africa, Asia or Australia, the quality experts and universities are looking at
more or less the same aspects, also called criteria and standards. Sometimes the wording of
the standards and criteria is different, but in most cases they cover the same aspects. Looking
at the information that all three regulatory bodies are requiring from the institutions when
applying for accreditation, one may distil the criteria that are seen as important, as shown in
Table 1. The table gives a comparison of the requirements in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Guidelines for Self Assessment
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IUCEA/ CHE/ NCHE/ TCU/ DAAD