Institutional Evaluation

ZEvA’s concept for the evaluation of institutional quality management systems is based on criteria from the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), which were agreed upon by the European Ministers for Education at the Bergen conference in May 2005, as well as on the ECA Code of Good Practice (CGP) that ZEvA subscribed to when joining the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) in 2004.

Institutional evaluation is usually organized in the form of an audit, consisting of a written report by the higher education institution, followed by hearings led by a panel of external experts and a final evaluation report which includes suggestions for improvement. At all phases, the audit aims at drawing out the strengths and weaknesses of the institution’s internal procedures of quality assurance and quality development in order to identify improvement potentials and to optimize organizational structures. It is not the prime objective of institutional evaluation to monitor compliance with standards, but to enhance an institution’s capacity for self-governance.