Quality Assurance Practice in African Universities: Lessons from a Private Nigerian University

Odukoya, Jonathan A.; Chinedu, Shalom Nwodo; George, Tayo O.; Olowookere, Elizabeth I.; Agbude, Godwyns

doi:10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n2p251

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…There is also evidence of establishment of QA units within private HEIs in Ghana and Nigeria (Odukoya, 2015;Ntim, 2014). In other institutions, quality departments are in the process of being established, as at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria (Müller et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Main Features and Challenges of Implementing Internal Quality Assurance Within African Higher Education Institutions: The Case of Eduardo Mondlane University

Zavale¹,

Santos²,

Dias³

2016

IJAHE

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Founded in 1962, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), Mozambique's largest and most prestigious university, established an Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) system for the first time in 2013. Based on UEM's case, this paper examines the features and challenges faced when implementing an IQA system within African higher education institutions. Literature on higher education quality assurance has widely examined the features of, and challenges faced by national QA systems, or by a QA system established across several higher education institutions (HEIs). However, this literature has rarely targeted single HEIs, particularly (African) HEIs that are establishing, for the first time, their IQA systems. Besides, even when IQA at a single HEI is targeted, this is often done by outsiders. Based on reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, this paper addresses the perspectives of both insiders and outsiders. The authors analyse a system that they have been involved in establishing. The paper's findings enable to conclude that the main challenges of implementing an IQA system in an African HEI are associated with linking QA to decision-making and to a funding strategy; training human resources and allocating funds for the system to operate and to be sustainable; enabling the system to be assimilated by the university community; and defining measurable and objective quality standards to enable unbiased performance classification.103 quality issue as a key higher education (HE) steering policy. Since the 1980s, developed countries have established systematic quality policies. Several factors accounted for this policy shift, including (i) massification of HE; (ii) loss of confidence on the capacity of HE to maintain high standards and meet the demands of a competitive labour market; (iii) decline in government funding and increasing demand for accountability of HE; (iv) rapid growth of HE private sector and emergence of new public management; and (v) increasingly competitive HE system (Van Damme, 2002;Rosa and Amaral, 2007). In Africa, the quality issue as a key national HE steering policy is also a new phenomenon: the majority of quality assurance (QA) agencies were established after 1990s. By 2012, about 21 African countries had established QA agencies, and a dozen other countries were moving in this direction (Shabani et al.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%