QUALITY ASSURANCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: THE ASIAN DIMENSION
Abstract
The article examines the peculiarities of the process in ensuring the quality of education in the countries of the East Asian region. In the research, different approaches of countries to determining the necessary conditions for providing quality educational services have been investigated, the trends in the development of higher education have been determined, and the legislative support for educational reforms aimed at improving the quality of higher education has been analyzed. Distinctive and similar features in the process of ensuring the quality of education in Asian countries have been identified. This includes the intention of all countries of this region to develop national systems in accordance with international standards with the aim of facilitating regional and international academic mobility of students, establishing mutual trust between countries, and confidence in the quality of educational services received. Similar features have been found in the mechanisms for ensuring the quality of education through external and internal evaluation systems (accreditation, academic audit, self-evaluation), the introduction at the national level of «dynamic concepts» for the integration of transparency in the activities and autonomy of higher education institutions, and effective tools for measuring the quality of educational programs and the competencies of graduates of these programs, the use of similar methods and procedures for accreditation, standards and quality assurance criteria. The presence of various regulatory bodies responsible for ensuring the quality of higher education in various countries of the Asian region and their functions (Ministry of Education, state and non-state agencies for ensuring the quality of education, technical councils, professional associations), the obligation to go through the accreditation procedure, financing from the state budget of accredited programs, different approaches to the process of accreditation of distance education programs (using the same criteria for traditional and distance higher education institutions, or developing special criteria for ensuring the quality of education for distance education). It was found that the education quality assurance system focuses on verifying the quality of training of newly established institutions and stimulating competition between educational institutions. The process of improving the quality of education in East Asian countries takes place under the influence of external and internal factors.
Key words: East Asian countries; ensuring the quality of education; institutions of higher education; accreditation; audit; the evaluation itself; evaluation criteria; monitoring.
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References
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