Subject Level Quality Evaluation and Accreditation

Background

This is a simultaneous quality evaluation of all educational programmes at all levels offered by all the higher education institutions (HEIs) belonging to a given professional field (directions, branches of science, where the specialties lie). Depending on the evaluation mark obtained at the end of this procedure, the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (NEAA) gives accreditation or refusal to each HEI to provide training in a given professional field.

This approach is more economical. It reduces the burden on the HEIs in relation to the number of self-evaluation reports and the number of site visits done by the NEAA’s experts. This means the HEIs have more time for training students and improving the quality of training. The approach is introduced by legislative way. It is sustainable and allows the HEIs to be more autonomous and more responsible in providing the educational programmes, and in the quality assurance context. It promotes introducing of innovations in the educational process as well

Today, in general, the programmes for the acquisition of higher education at a given educational and qualificational degree are designed in compliance with the Ordinance on State Requirements for Acquisition of Higher Education at the educational and qualificational degrees of Bachelor, Master, and “Specialist in..”, adopted by Decree No 162 / 23 July 2002 (published, SG issue 76 / 06.08.2002, last supplemented, issue 79 / 05.09.2003). The “Specilalist in..” degree has been recently replaced by “Professional Bachelor in..”, since last amendments and supplements of the Higher Education Act, published, SG issue 41 / 2007). NEAA is the specialized state body responsible for evaluation, accreditation and quality control of the HEIs’ activities and the scientific research institutions with respect to training specialists and improving their qualification, as well as to developing the science, the culture and the innovative activities.

Aims and targets

The aim of this policy is to raise the HEIs’ academic autonomy and responsibility with respect to the quality of their educational programmes; Improvement of the effectiveness of the accreditation process; Introduction of the students’ point of view in the external quality evaluation process; development of a model for students’ participation in it. Student prepares an independent report (without being a member of the expect group), with a focus on his / her areas of competence. Next this report is taken in account by the expert group and by the decision making body, as well. Announcement of the accreditation results - improving the transparency and greater publicity of the services, provided in the higher education area. Facilitation of the academic recognition in the EHEA; Information and support of the decision making process performed by the state authorities related to the reforms in higher education. Support of the government’s financial policy by binding the accreditation decisions with determining the HEI’s capacity for admission of students for a given professional field.

Targets set include:

• High quality assurance and support in the higher education area;
• Funding reform by introduction of mechanisms based on evaluation of the HEI’s capacity for training students and of the professional field’s capacity.

Strategy and actions

• structure, organisation of training and educational contents;  profile and qualification of the academic staff; 
• training equipment;
• use of teaching methods and methods of students evaluation; 
• overall quality assurance and control; 
• research and creative activities of the academic staff and participation of students and doctorands in them.

Essential elements of the procedure, performed by the NEAA, are check-up of the syllabi’s and curricula's effectiveness with respect to the quality assurance, the correspondence between the professional profile and the qualification level of the academic staff, including exploration of students' opinion and the employers' opinion, as well. In this aspect, comparisons between the programmes provided by similar Bulgarian and foreign HEIs are performed too. In order to obtain program accreditation of professional directions, the HEIs firstly must be accredited at institutional level. Next they must submit to the NEAA, together with other documents, a self-evaluation report, including information about satisfying of the Higher Education Act's requirements and of the NEAA's criteria. The procedure is performed simultaneously for all HEIs that offer programmes for acquisition of higher education at all levels / degrees in a given professional direction. As a consequence of the reform, the NEAA has changed the context of its activity in order to improve the quality of higher education provided for the different educational degrees. The agency has begun its work using new criteria for evaluation and accreditation at institutional and programme level (by professional fields), as well as new criteria and recommendations for post-accreditation monitoring and control. These criteria and recommendations are developed according the Higher Education Act and to a great extend with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in EHEA. They are based on the principle of equal value of the three main activities in the HEIs: educational activity, research activity, and management of the institution. In order to support, to guide, and to orientate the higher education institutions in their aspiration to assure higher quality of training and higher quality of the academic staff, a new unit for post-accreditation monitoring and control has been established at the NEAA in 2004-2005.

Monitoring and evaluation

NEAA provides annual reports of its activity, ensures transparency of the procedures and publicity of the accreditation marks obtained by the HEIs among the stakeholders and the academic community. The Ministry of Education and Science controls the HEIs' activities with respect to observing the order and the requirements set by this law. Register of the accredited HEIs is published on the Ministry of Education and Science's web site. It contains information about the state of play of their accreditation (both at institutional level and at programme accreditation of professional fields’ level, duration and validity of accreditation, assessment marks), with links to the NEAA's web site, and with links to the HEIs’ web sites too.

Funding/Cost effectiveness

Time and resources put into work towards this accreditation procedure is considerably less than in the case of accreditation done specialty by specialty and programme by programme.

Sustainability/Transferability

Outcomes/impacts

Achievements

Success factors

Unintended impacts

Strengths and weaknesses

It is a way of giving HEIs more autonomy and flexibility in curricular design, assuring high quality of education and promoting the introduction of innovations in curricula. Keeping the right balance between high quality education and more autonomy for the HEIs is a real challenge. Strengths: provision of higher education’s state analysis in a given professional field in comparative view. It supports both the national policies development and the candidate student’s choice of a HEIs; Recommendations made in the NEAA’ evaluation reports support the HEIs’ further work directed to improvement of certain quality assurance; Assistance to the governmental policy related to higher education funding by providing a recommendable capacity for admission of students in a given professional field for each HEIs.
Weaknesses: High level of fragmentation existing in certain professional fields, including big number of Bachelor, Master and Doctoral programmes, as well as its provision by a big number of HEIs cause difficulties in performing integrated accreditation procedure in one session’s framework; Irregular workload of the evaluators due to non-fitting differentiation of certain professional fields within the national classifier of the higher education areas and the professional fields; n separated cases – different application of the NEAA’s criteria for evaluation of a certain professional fields, due to need of attracting a big number of evaluators at one and the same time (the number of national evaluators in a given professional field is a limited one)

Curricular reform

• Three cycle system
• Student centred learning
• Flexible learning paths
• Employability
• Recognition
• Mobility
• Enhance inter-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity
  
  
  

Funding reform

Sources of funding (public, enterprises, tuitions, philanthropic etc)

Governance reform

• Autonomy for Universities
• Internal accountability for universities
• Management and leadership reform
• External accountability of universities
• Innovation and knowledge transfer
  
  

Management reform