Quality Management System of HEIs: a survey of relevant quality indicators

Higher education quality management systems (QMS) are often criticised for being too process oriented, box-ticking and insufficiently focused on consequential and generalizable outcomes. One of the reasons underlying these critics relies on the fact that QMS tend to rely on a large quantity of quality indicators, which makes their accuracy and timely analysis difficult, and consequently undermine their adequate use for decision-making at different levels (strategic, tactical, or operational).

In this context, the main objective of the SMART-QUAL project is to support higher education institutions (HEIs) in the implementation of effective internal QMS, by designing a set of quality indicators to support them. In order to arrive at the planned structured catalogue of quality indicators, the project intends, in a first phase, to develop a Quality Indicators Scoreboard and a Smart-Qual Wiki. In order to do so the first step was to do a survey of the most relevant indicators used in HEIs across Europe. Information was gathered on the current situation of QMS in 36 HEIs spread over 5 European countries (Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Lithuania and Italy), with particular emphasis being given to the quality indicators used in these systems.

In this work we present the methodology used in this first step as well as some of the main results obtained.

Quality Management Systems, Higher Education Institutions, Key Performance Indicators