Internal quality assurance in higher education institutions from the perspectives of academic staff, students and program accreditation

This paper presents detailed studies based on the “Bologna (ausgewertet)” evaluation project (SUCHANEK, PIETZONKA, KUENZEL & FUTTERER, 2012a, 2012b, 2013, PIETZONKA, 2012). The aim of the project was to examine the implementation of the education reform in the higher education institutions (HEIs) of Lower Saxony. During the project, the requirements of accreditation procedures were evaluated. Furthermore, academic staff and student representatives were questioned about their experiences and perceptions. The present study isolates the results pertaining to quality assurance and describes their implications in detail. The results reveal some significant deficiencies in the implementation and evaluation of the processes and in the use of the data obtained. The evaluations often have no tangible effect, and program accreditation is unable to sufficiently ensure the effectiveness of internal quality assurance.

22.03.2013 | Manuel Pietzonka (Hannover)