Lost in the Process: How Stakeholders View the Quality of Public Universities in Croatia?

Abstract

Outcome-based education is becoming relevant discourse in evaluating the quality of study programmes through the European Commission Policies. Using an analysis of the evaluation indicators that point to the desired concept of quality, this research provides a deeper insight into the expectations that the major stakeholders (government, academia and agencies) in the Croatian higher education system have from public universities and whether these institutions are output- -oriented, which is stated as an objective in the European, and also in the Croatian context. The perception of quality that stakeholders imply by measuring the academic performance of public universities for different purposes is analysed by means of characteristics of indicators in the input-process-output matrix. The results show that the overall quality is largely based on measuring the quality of processes at higher education institutions, then on inputs and very little on outputs. According to the importance of indicators, teacher and student mobility are categories evaluated in the documents of all stakeholders. Lastly, this study contributes to the consideration and evaluation of the quality of public universities at the national level and their compatibility with international perspectives.