Challenges for faculty management at African higher education institutions

Abstract

Enormous changes characterize university management in various aspects all over the world today, introducing new concepts to describe old and new approaches towards effectiveness. Among these is the concept and practice of quality management. Quality management has three components: quality control; quality assurance, and quality improvement. Quality assurance for example requires sufficient planning and development of appropriate tools, which are designed to measure performance of lecturers with regard to knowledge, skills, pedagogy and experience in teaching specific courses for quality assurance. The analysis of the data/information acquired, following the administration of assessment tools, should be targeted towards quality assurance not in a vacuum, but through the strategic development of improvement action plans, within which the best practices are appreciated and built upon, while the weaknesses are responded to with mediating/correcting initiatives. The paper, therefore, picks out the attitudinal challenges of introducing quality assurance, within an African higher education setting as a central theme. It focuses on the East Africa region as coordinated by the IUCEA, Moi University and specifically locates the dialogue within the context as experienced during the implementation of this writer’s Personal Action Plan (PAP) in the School of Arts and Social Sciences (SASS), and more specifically in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Moi University. The action plan was developed in the course of the writer’s participation in the International Deans’ Course on Faculty Management, an initiative of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE), the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) and Towards a Culture of Quality Management at SASS, Moi University: Changing lecturers’ Attitudes to Student Assessment/QM 15 experts from Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, and Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. We demonstrate that change of attitude, which is a necessary prerequisite to accepting change, is possible in spite of specific challenges.