Presentation and activities

Under the actual conditions of increase of the participation rate in higher education, of the universities’ role in the process of lifelong learning, of preoccupations on the increase of universities’ performance (formation of research outcomes and competences), existence of an informational asymmetry between the providers and beneficiaries of educational services, as well as the redefinition of the university autonomy principle and adaptation of universities to the requirements of the labour market and of the society in general, the quality evaluation of higher education becomes a barometer in the elaboration of the strategy of increasing higher education quality

 

Objectives

  • Identifying the real state of higher education services’ quality from a system and multi-stakeholder perspective: students, teaching staff, employers.
  • The systematic investigation, representative at national level, of the opinions of the three types of actors mentioned with concern to the state of higher education quality.
  • Setting up a transparency culture concerning the quality of educational services and integrating the beneficiaries’ and civil society’s voice in the process of drawing up institutional strategies and policies.
  • Carrying out longitudinal studies, on a three-year period, in order to identify the evolution trends of the three types of actors’ opinions.
  • The empirical substantiation of the future policies and strategies of increasing higher education quality.

Activities

1. Carrying out an annual survey (on the whole 3 surveys during the project’s development) on the students’ opinions and perceptions regarding the quality of services provided – annual survey report.

2. Carrying out an annual survey (on the whole 3 surveys during the project’s development) on the teaching staff’s opinions and perceptions regarding the state of higher education – annual survey report.

3. Carrying out an annual survey (on the whole 3 surveys during the project’s development) on the employers’ opinions and perceptions regarding the quality of services provided and their suitableness to the labour market requirements – annual survey report.

4. Secondary analysis of the existent data coming from the universities’ evaluation reports – experts’ opinion with concern to the state of quality at system level – Quality Barometer – synthetic annual report comprising four-source data (three types of surveys + universities’ institutional evaluation data)

5. Carrying out a Policy Paper in the third year of project, comprising the policy proposals regarding quality improvement at system level and on types of institutions, proposals that are empirically substantiated on the longitudinal analyses carried out.

 

The human resource invested in the achievement of proposed objectives is represented by the Activity Coordinator and the team made up by the coordinator Assistant, 3 experts for the methodology development, 3 experts for data analysis and elaboration of annual reports for the 3 annual surveys. The Quality Barometer team shall comprise 10 experts annually. 9 experts shall contribute to the elaboration of Policy Paper at the end of the project.

Data collection shall be sub-contracted according to GEO 34/2004 to social research-specialised institutes.