Higher Education Study Programme Quality Assessment

Abstract

Study programme quality assessment provides higher education quality which in its turn is an essential precondition for the successful national economy development. At the moment the society has a lot of discussion about what is higher education quality and how to assess it. The pragmatic approach makes us set criteria for study programme quality assessment. However, before doing that one must understand what higher education quality is. Developing over the years, higher education has created different quality understandings. The different quality understandings form the necessity of different quality assessment approaches. As the foundation of higher education quality assessment to create the methodological basis there are taken higher education quality assessment conceptions distinguished by R. Barnett: objective, subjective and development. Each of the conceptions intends to use different approaches for higher education assessment. The research approbates the usage of The Analytic Hierarchy process (AHP) method to detect the most significant study programme quality criteria and the most suitable way of assessment for them. AHP method is based on expert surveys, which were taken part by two most important interest groups interested in higher education: higher education administrative staff and students. Higher education administrators are represented by Higher Education Council representative, LU heads of administrative departments and leadership staff who are responsible for study quality and programme accreditation. In their turn, students are represented by members of Latvian Student Association, LU student council representatives and students from different LU faculties.