I am currently doing a research to investigate whether quality assurance has an impact in improving the performance and standards in Gulf States (Oman, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia) higher education institutions. The main primary focus of the study are three themes, teaching, governance and ranking. The study proposed to employ resource based view (RBV) as a theoretical framework. The reason behind choosing this theory is because the core research of RBV is performance heterogeneity and capabilities. I want some recommendations or articles that used quality assurance to measure performance improvement in higher education institutions.
Students Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness (SETE) is the current concept to measure the Quality of Higher Education. Here, the Students are the customers to decide the Quality of educational experiences provided by the Universities. So, the whole idea of Quality revolves around them. There are more studies availble on SETE. One such research article is: "On the Contribution of Student Experience Survey Regarding Quality Management in Higher Education": An Institutional Study in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Service Science & Management, 2010, 3, 464-469. This will give you clarity about how the students views are used to improve quality of Higher education system.
Quality assurance is necessary for the purpose of improving higher education, but it is not sufficient anyway. In India, now a days quality assurance is taken care of in every University. But the Indian Universities are hardly ranked high internationally. In fact, quality assurance has hardly been assuring quality as far as the Indian situation is concerned.
Research, teaching, extension education etc. are factors that should be taken care of in every institute of higher learning. Governance should be unbiased and corruption free. The institutions should be student friendly. If all such things are taken care of, quality would be assured automatically.
Buildings and laboratories do not make a University a University; students do. This needs to be taken care of.
To compete internationally, there are some other criteria needs to considered. A set of international standards that needs to achieved to get place in ranking. It depends upon the certifying body. Generally, some of the critical factors are: Teaching Quality, Research, Contribution to the community, Presence of International students, Commitment of the Top mangement through appropriate Governance and Administration and, Resouces like Library and Laboratory facilities. The detailed information to know about the ranking system of the universities are available in this weblink: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings.
The question was posted with reference to the Gulf States. These are oil-rich countries. The governments of such countries can establish top class laboratories in the Universities concerned very easily. They can also get teachers from foreign countries if necessary. But what about researches? It can be surmised that students of such countries get scholarships from their governments very easily to study in Universities in UK for example. So the students who pass out from the Universities of such countries choose to go for their researches in countries like UK or USA. Then who exactly will use those top class laboratories?
That is why I mentioned earlier that buildings and laboratories do not make a University a University, but students do. And unless a University gets good students, it can not assure good quality.
Presently, the exact situation is different. Most of the students who are doing their studies abroad are getting permission to do their research in their home country. Even, abroad based Universities are accepting that and there are provisions for the same. There are good number of research studies are presently going on in Gulf Countries. The Resources are very high and there are world class Infrastructure present in these Universities to carry out high quality research. The Ministry of Higher Education is providing sufficient funding for the researchers to pursue a good quality research in Gulf especially in KSA. To facilitate that, there is a seperate Deanship of Scientific Research is functioning in each Government University in KSA. Moreover, Universities in Gulf are starting their Post gradaute programs and I am sure that there is a good scope for the researchers to produce high Quality Research.
For high quality researches, guidance of high quality is an important factor.
Many factors come into play to ensure that QA processes improved outcomes. Some include: leadership, resourcing, course design, teaching methods, assessments, educational infrastructure, and processes to track and monitor academic outcomes of students irrespective of the mode of study.
If you truly ask me excellence begins right at the top-- that excellence and hence commitment is missing atleast in the Middle east in some countries. A big building or many colleges in a university means nothing. Quality requires great faculty (and they dont come cheap-you get what you pay for), an incentive structure for promotion of good faculty and a clear expectation of the administration that if quality research and teaching won't be produced the retention of faculty would be not granted. Filling out endless templates of NCAAA will not bring in quality. We would have to do justice to this whole concept of quality and understand its true determinants.
Dear Humaid
Yes, some of the references which are supported this aim are:
1- Z. A. Al-Hemyari, S. Al Bulushi and A. Al-Humairi (2017). Quality Teaching of Private HEIs: Comparative Study based on Students’ Perceptions and Expectations. Accepted in Int. J. of Quality and Innovation (Inderscience).
2- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2017). HEIs Quality Improvement Through Students and Academic Staff’s Perception: Data Analysis and Robustness of the Results. International Journal for Quality Research, Vol.11, No.2, pp.261-278(Serbia and Indexed in Elsevier).
3- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2017). Al-Farahidi Performative model to assess HEIs. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, Muscat, pp.1-15.
4- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and S. Al-Balushi (2017). Students’ Perceptions and Expectations in Quality Teaching of Private HEIs: Comparative Study. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, Muscat, pp.1-14.
5- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2016). A Framework for Fostering the Quality of HEIs: Data Collection, Evaluation, Indication and Validation. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation, Vol.3, No.1, pp.42-66 (Inderscience).
6- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2015). Standards, benchmarks and qualitative indicators to enhance the institution’s activities and performance: Surveys and data analysis. International Journal of Knowledge-Based Organizations (IJKBO), 5 (4), pp.38-62 (IGI, USA).
7- A. M. Al-Sarmi and Z. A. Al-Hemyari (2015). Performance Measurement in Private HEIs: Performance Indicators, Data Collection and Analysis. Proceedings of the Conference “The Future of Education”, pp. 511-516 (Italy).
8- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2015). Developing and Establishing Statistical Indicators for Fostering the Quality of Omani HEIs. International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education (IJCDSE), Volume 6, Issue 2, pp. 2142-2151. (The Infonomics Society, Ireland).
9- A. M. Al-Sarmi and Z. A. Al-Hemyari (2014). Quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess the performance of higher education institutions. Int. J. of Information and Decision sciences,
Vol.6, No. 4, pp.369-392 (Inderscience).
11- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2014). Statistical characteristics of performance indicators. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation. Vol.2, No.3-4, pp. 385-309 (Inderscience).
12- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2014). Features of performance indicators in quality improvement of HEIs. Proceedings of the Ireland International Conference in Education (IICE), Oct. 26-28, pp. 390-395 (Dublin, Ireland).
13- A. M. Al-Sarmi and Z. A. Al-Hemyari (2014). Goals and objectives: Statistical techniques and measures for performance improvement of HEIs in Oman. Int. J. of Management in Education. Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.244–264(Inderscience).
Regards,
Zuhair
Yes:
Article Design Research for University course programs ISO9001:2015 ...
One of the ways to improve the quality in HEI is to adequately prepare for the optimal use of Information and Communication Technology (ITC). These institutes should be run by ITC enabled administrative processes.