QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE

Abstract

The article reviews international practice in managing and reforming national education quality assurance systems. Due to the influence of debates about instruments that have the potential to contribute to the development of quality education, many countries over the past decades have elaborated a system for assessing higher education quality. The review discusses both countries known for a long history of quality assurance (England or the United States) and cases that, under the influence of external pressures, developed a model of quality assessment from scratch. There are three significant trends in international experience. Firstly, countries either substantially reform the format of accreditation or abandon it entirely. There is a consensus among experts that the aim of the assessment system should be improving the quality of education. The accreditation is not suitable for it, since this format is generally related to satisfying the minimum standards. Secondly, more and more experts emphasize the advantages of quality audit, its format being related to assessing the university’s ability to autonomously maintain high standards of education quality. Third, the rejection of a unified assessment of universities is considered necessary, as it leads to a decrease in the diversity of the education system. A quality assurance system should take into account the specific features of the university, since the differentiated education system is more responsive to the demands of the labour market, the needs of students and society. The idea of creating uniform quality standards outside Russia and several countries of Eastern Europe not only lacks popularity, but is also criticized actively. All these trends allow us to conclude that the current Russian education quality assurance system does not meet international trends. In this regard, the experience of other countries in organizing the national system of education quality assessment is seen as particularly relevant to the context of Russian higher education.