Promoting critical knowledge, skills and qualifications for
sustainable development in Africa: How to design and
implement an effective response
through education and training systems
Sub-theme 3
Lifelong acquisition of scientific and
technological knowledge and skills
for Africa’s sustainable development
in a globalized world
REGIONAL COOPERATION FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE:
THE IUCEA/DAAD EAST AFRICAN QUALITY ASSURANCE INITIATIVE
The document is a working document still in the stages of production. It has been prepared to serve as a basis for discussions at the ADEA Triennale Meeting and should not be disseminated for other purposes at this stage.
©
Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) – 2012
Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)
African Development Bank (AfDB) Temporary Relocation Agency (ATR)
13 avenue du Ghana BP 323 1002 Tunis Belvédère Tunisia Tel: +216/ 71 10 39 86 Fax: +216/ 71 25 26 69 adea@afdb.org
Contents
1. ABSTRACT... 5
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ... 6
3. INTRODUCTION ... 8
4. POSITIONING OF THE CONTRIBUTION WITHIN THE TRIENNALE PREPARATION PROCESS... 9
5. BACKGROUND TO THE IUCEA/DAAD QA INITIATIVE ... 10
6. THE PREPARATION... 11
7. THE DECISION. ... 12
8. THE ACTIVITIES ... 13
9. LESSONS FROM THE EXPERIENCE... 16
10.PROJECT EVALUATION BY EXTERNAL EXPERT... 17
11.THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE EXTERNAL REVIEWERSERREUR ! SIGNET NON DEFINI. 12.THE STATUS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN EAST AFRICA: EVIDENCE FROM THE PROJECT SO FAR... 19
13.WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER? ... 20
14.CONCLUSION ... 22
Acronyms and abbreviations
CHE Commission for Higher Education DAAD German Academic Exchange Service
DIES Dialogue on Innovative Higher Education Strategies DVCs Deputy Vice-Chancellors
EAC East African Community EU European Union
HOD Head of Department
HRK The German Rectors’ Conference
INQAAHE International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education
IUCEA Inter-University Council of EastAfrica NCHE National Council for Higher Education NRAs National Regulatory Agencies
QA Quality Assurance
QAO Quality Assurance Officer
1.
ABSTRACT
1. This paper analyzises the introduction of a regional quality assurance (QA) framework for the East African higher education sector under the auspices of the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK). The cooperation lasted from 2006 to 2011; first three, later five, National Regulatory Agencies (NRA), and 45 Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have been actively involved. The paper first explores why such a framwwork has become urgent. It introduces the concept of Joint Capacity Development as a low intervention alternative to classical technical assistance. It discusses the benefits of cooperation beyond borders and how international experiences from Latin America, Asia and Europe have been used to develop the design of the joint QA initative for East Africa. The activities of the cooperation as learning visits for decisionmakers, participatory development and testing of a regional QA handbook, and the close alignment of QA coordinators’ trainings and programme assessments are presented. Subsequently the process and results of its internal and external evaluation are discussed. Finally concsequences for the second phase (2011-2015) and possible learnings for similar initiatives are presented.
2.
E
XECUTIVE SUMMARY
2. BACKGROUND: The IUCEA-DAAD-HRK cooperation on quality assurance in East African Higher Education was initiated against the backdrop of massification of education with rising numbers of students and rapidly increasing numbers of higher education institutions. Today, the Inter-University Council of East Africa has more than 88 members as opposed to only 33 in 2002. This growth is of course driven by the equally phenomenal growth in the number of students that qualify for admission to the university. The current enrolment in the five countries of the East African Community is over 650,000 students and has been approximately doubled within the last four years. The temptation for Governments and private investors to increase numbers on the expense of quality has been enourmous. The cooperation partners have been convinced that introducing an instituationalised system of quality assurance would become a question of survival for universities as acedemic institutions. Consideration was also made of the trend towards internationalization of education in the context of globalization and emerging regional higher education frameworks such as the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process) or similar trends in Latin America and South East Asia.
3. GAP: For East Africa’s higher education programs and products to be regionally and internationally comparable and competitive, and for key decisions to be made with minimized interference of national pressure groups, a regional quality assurance framework was seen to have considerable adavantages over national systems. Moreover, trust building through QA has been considered as a major prerequiste for creating a system of mutual recognition of degrees, this way facilitating mobility of students and university graduates. Increased stakeholder involvement was to be developed as a key part of quality enhancement. Without bringing in professional bodies, employers, students, and high profile academics into a quality assurance framework and into continous curriculum development Higher Education was to loose relevance and eventually acceptance of degrees by the labour market would be endangered.
4. CONCEPT: Joint Capacity Development had been developed and used as a conceptual framework for the cooperation. Notwithstanding the complex nature of the endeavour no long term experts or permanent policy advisors have been involved, no offices have been furnished, no compters have been bought from donor funding. This has been only possible because partners of similar profiles have been involved on both sides and scattered capacity in the participating countries could be brought together. The IUCEA is a mixed organisation of nearly 90 public and private Universities, all National Regulatory Agencies (NRA) in the region and the now five Governments of the East African Community (EAC), a number of key non-academic stakeholders and donors are members. Since 2009 IUCEA is an official organ of the EAC. DAAD and HRK are associations of German Universities, they are mainly financed by public funds. DAAD is an offical mediating organisation of German foreign policy, HRK plays a key role in the development of the European Higher Education Area and co-prepares the bi-annual ministerial conferences in close cooepration with the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Therefore, both institiutions had easy access to QA experts, decision makers and stakeholders in all fields relavant to Quality Assurance in their respective regions. Within this framework, a well elaborated and complexly interwoven system of activities had been adapeted from a similar project in Central America (1998-2005). It consisted of (a) international and national dialogue events with decsion makers on different levels, (b) the participatory development of a regional QA handbook taking into account existing national regulations on the basis of a similar manual in South East Asia and, (c) the practice oriented multi-part training of new QA coordinators and professionals of NRAs, (d) the timely preparation of peer reviewers, (e) the piloting of internal and external assessments of study programmes in six selected fields and (f) first steps to develop regional benchmarks in two selected fields.
5. ACTIVITIES: The Road Map to Quality: A handbook for Quality Assurance in Higher Education
in four volumes has been developed and adapted after the first round of 22 pilot programme assessments. The two volumes published so far are related to self-assessment and external assessment of programs. Two four-part training courses for prospective quality assurance coordinators from universities that volunteered to participate in the process were conducted. These QA coordinators were trained on the use of the handbook and on subjects such as the nature of quality assurance, how to carry out self-assessment and external assessment at program level and how to establish internal quality assurance systems in a higher institution of learning. The use of the handbook was piloted in the 45 universities and internal and external evaluation of 47 programs spread across universities in East Africa were prepared between the four phases of training courses. National sensitation workshops with all deans of reective faculties, work place visits by experts and information visits of decision makers to Europe were conducted simultanously. The external reviews involved experts from East Africa and beyond: 57 peer reviewers participated out of which 52 came from East Africa. At the end in more than 30 universities permanent QA structures have been established which now continue to use the pilot experience to conduct further assessments. There is anecdotical evidence from a number of universities that key recommendations of extarnal assessments have been put into practice and curriculum revision is under way.
6. EVALUATION: An evaluation of the cooperation has been conducted using the same mechanism of internal and extarnal assessment. To assure widespread participation and transparency the East African and the German sides developed their respective comprehensive self assessment reports. On this basis a team of high profile international experts coordinated by the President of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) looked into the project and interviewed a wide range of participants and stakeholders as part of their field visits in East Africa. Key findings were (a) the system of close integration of training and piloting has worked considerably well (b) the parallel sensitation of all key decision makers including the Deans’ level has been decisive (c) the preperation of the peers could have been more intensive considering the importance of their visits (d) the handbook should include more transparent information on the concepts used and provide information on good practices (e) the overall regional QA framework should be developed further by creating clear incentives and regulations for QA to make full use of the human capacities developed and finally (f) explict provisions should be made to assure multiplication and sustainability to organise the development from the current pilot phase to a widespread and permanent QA system.
7. CONCLUSION:Joint Capacity Development worked considerably well for awareness creation at decsion making level, for developing a widely accepted framework for self assessment and external assessment across a small well intergrated region, for training decisive human ressources and for piloting key elements of the current international “gold standard” for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. In the second phase of the cooperation starting form 2012 more emphasis will be given to fully enable East African co-trainers to independently run QA trainings, to further establish the regional network of QA coordinators and to the inclusion of non-academic stakeholders. The key challenge, however, remains to create decisive incentives for the widespread use of the capacity created and to support the implementation of key recommendations of external assessments. By making quality assurance to one of its core activities and by rasing respective budgetory and political support from the East African Community IUCEA recently has taken major steps into this direction.
3.
I
NTRODUCTION
(FROM HERE DRAFT ONLY)
For East Africa’s higher education programs and products to be regionally and internationally comparable and competitive, and for key decisions to be made without minimized interference of national political pressure groups, a regional quality assurance framework was seen as indispensable. Trust building through QA has been seen as major prerequiste for creating a system of regional recognition this way facilitating mobility of stiudents and graduates. Increased stakeholder involvement has been considered as a key part of quality assurance. Without bringing in professional bodies, employers, students, and high profile academics into a quality assurance framework and into continous curriculum development Higher Education was to loose relevance and eventually acceptance of degrees could be endangered.
For East Africa’s higher education programs and products to be regionally and internationally comparable and competitive, and for key decisions to be made without minimized interference of national political pressure groups, a regional quality assurance framework was seen as indispensable. Trust building through QA has been seen as major prerequiste for creating a system of regional recognition this way facilitating mobility of stiudents and graduates. Increased stakeholder involvement has been considered as a key part of quality assurance. Without bringing in professional bodies, employers, students, and high profile academics into a quality assurance framework and into continous curriculum development Higher Education was to loose relevance and eventually acceptance of degrees could be endangered.
Joint capacity development had been developed and used as a concept for cooperation. Notwithstanding the complex nature of the endeavour no long term experts or permanent policy advisors have been involved, no offices have been furnished, no compters have been bought from donor funding. This has been only possible because partners of similar profiles have been involved on both sides. The IUCEA is a mixed organisation of nearly 90 public and private Universities, all NRAs in the region and the now five Governments of the East African Community (EAC), key non-academic stakeholders and donors are additional members. Since 2009 it is an official organ of the EAC. The DAAD and HRK are associations of German Universities, yet, mainly financed by public funds. DAAD is an offical mediating organisation of German foreign policy, HRK plays a key role in the development of the European Higher Education Area and prepares the key Ministerial conferences in close cooepration with the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Therefore, both institiutions have easy access to experts, decision makers and stakeholders in all fields relavant to Quality Assurance both on the national and international level. Within this framework, a well elaborated and interwoven system of activities which orginated from a similar project in Central America (1998-2005) has been developed.
4.
P
OSITIONING OF THE
C
ONTRIBUTION WITHIN THE
TRIENNALE PREPARATION PROCESS
1. Global trends in higher education have challenged governments in many parts of the world. This has called for adjusted and up-to-date steering mechanisms in order to guarantee the quality of higher education provision, first and foremost at national level. But given a situation where mobility is increasing and new providers enter the global higher education market purely national approaches seem to be insufficient. Trust building among governments and universities as well as increased transparency for all stakeholders involved serve as a prerequisite for higher education cooperation and subsequent agreements on the joint recognition of study periods and degrees, which ultimately facilitates the mobility of students, staff and workforce. This calls for credible QA systems on a transnational level. Capacity Development initiatives aiming at supporting regional cooperation in quality assurance in developing countries are supported within the DIES programme (Dialogue on Innovative Higher Education Strategies) funded by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). One pillar of the DIES programme includes regional quality assurance (QA) projects. If QA takes place in cooperation with neighbouring countries and their higher education institutions, it not only fosters the South-South mobility, but also additionally increases the credibility of a QA system.
5.
BACKGROUND TO THE IUCEA - PROCESS
K QA INITIATIVE
2. The East African countries, conscious of global trends towards regional integration and the benefits thereof, joined together to form the East African Community (EAC). This body came into being with the signing of the treaty on its establishment in 1999, in Arusha Tanzania. At that time the member states were Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. These three countries had had a history of regional cooperation under the same name of East African Community which lasted from 1967-1977. Rwanda and Burundi became full members of the community in July 2007. The member states are likely to increase in number as other countries such as South Sudan apply for membership. Indeed Sudan has already applied for membership and it is likely that Ethiopia, Somaliland and Somalia will also apply for membership in the future. As per 2009 statistics, available on the EAC website (http://www.eac.int/about-eac/quick-facts.html), the community as currently constituted brings together a population of more 130 million people and a combined GDP of 74.5 billion US dollars. These statistics can however belie the historical and structural disparities between the five member states: Kenya and Uganda are former British colonies and their education system is generally aligned to the British system. The language of instruction in their schools, especially upper primary and beyond is English. On the other hand, Rwanda and Burundi are former French colonies and their lingua franca as well as the education system is French. Tanzania was colonized by the Germans for a time before being taken over by the British. As a result of Nyerere’s Africanisation policy, Kiswahili was made a national language and used as a media of instruction in schools. The situation is made even more complex because of two phenomena: First, in an attempt to meet national demands for education, Kenya reformed its education system to introduce what is now known as the 8.4.4 system of education. This means that students take 8 years in primary school, 4 years in secondary school and 4 years at the university. Uganda and Tanzania have maintained their ordinary and advanced levels of education which means their degree programs are based on a three year cycle; secondly, there are also different systems of education in each of the countries that deviate from the national norm. In Kenya, for example, we have some schools running international systems and some private universities operating an American system of education. The same scenario applies in the rest of the countries. These disparities suggest that a system must be put in place, as happened in the bologna process, to ensure comparability of the educational qualifications if mobility of students and staff is to be achieved in the East African region. As in the European Union, education must play a key role in the region’s integration. There is of course the other dimension relating to the fact that graduates of the East African region also need to be mobile internationally and to have their qualifications recognized world-wide in a globalized economy.
3. In recognition of the foregoing dynamics, the Inter-university Council of East Africa (IUCEA) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) begun to explore possibilities of developing an East Africa wide higher education quality assurance framework. They teamed up with the German Rector’s Conference (HRK) and the University of Oldenburg in Germany. In East Africa, the National Regulatory Agencies (NRAs) comprising of the Kenya Commission for Higher Education, Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) and Uganda’s National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE)also joined the team and played a significant roles since these are the government implementing agencies for quality assurance. It was envisaged that these, in conjunction with selected higher education institutions would spearhead the process.
6.
THE PREPARATION
4. Given the national, historical, cultural, educational and economic diversity of the East African Community’s member states, it was not going to be easy to introduce a common quality assurance framework. The countries and their respective universities are proud of their heritage. Although the universities had had a long history of assuring their quality through such institutions and processes such faculty boards, senate, external examination and moderation, few of the universities had systematic and structured quality assurance systems. Indeed even the NRAs had different mandates in the difference countries. While in Uganda and Tanzania the NRAs had mandate over both private and public universities, in Kenya CHE’s main jurisdiction was limited to private universities. It would be inevitable that a regional quality assurance system would find resistance at national as well as at institutional levels. In order to reduce the resistance and gain wide acceptance, the IUCEA/DAAD quality assurance (QA) initiative begun by inviting a team of 30 comprising leaders of higher education institutes: vice-chancellors, registrars, senior administrators, academics and managers; NRA representatives and government representatives for a sensitization workshop and visits to German academic institutions as well corporate organizations in January 2006. This forum provide an opportunity for the invitees to dialogue on QA issues within and outside Africa as well as discuss the prospects and modalities for the introduction of a regional QA system fashioned after the Bologna process that was ongoing within the European union.
7.
THE DECISION
5. After the visit, the participants not only clearly understood the need for a regional quality assurance initiative for the East African region but they were also agreed it was needed for the good of the region’s higher education. There was a need to have an East African Higher Education Area just as there was a European Higher Education Area. The visit to German by senior university administrators and government officials was complimented by national and regional meetings in East Africa in which participants discussed the idea of the regional QA framework and its implementation. In the end, Universities agreed to support a project for the establishment of the QA system by establishing QA units in their universities and supporting them with establishment, budget and infrastructure. IUCEA and DAAD were mandated to spearhead the process through mutually agreed projects. On this basis IUCEA and DAAD proceeded to draw a memorandum of understanding and an action framework that would involve further regional and national dialogue events, the development of a QA handbook, the training of quality assurance officers, and the piloting of the handbook by universities which would conduct program self-assessment followed by a peer review and finally the drawing and implementation of improvement plans by the universities based on the self-assessment and the peer review reports.
8.
THE ACTIVITIES
8.1. Developing of the Quality Assurance Handbook
6. A Dutch quality assurance expert, Ton Vroeijnstijn, was contracted to help in the drafting of a QA handbook that would guide the implementation of the East African Initiative. . The handbook had to take into consideration both East African and international best practices on QA. He drew from his vast experience in South East Asia, Europe and South America but also incorporated ideas from the guidelines and standards stipulated in the guiding documents of the then three East African Countries. There was an editorial group, including four East African experts, who were to help adapt the draft to the East African situation. This process ensured that the final handbook was both international and localized.
8.2. The Training of QA Officers
7. The project trained two cohorts of 22 and 25 quality assurance officers in Germany in 2007 and 2008 respectively (Inter-University Council of East Africa, 2010). These officers were appointed by their IUCEA member universities which voluntarily agreed to participate in the piloting of the hand and were chosen on mutually agreed criteria between the universities on the one hand and IUCEA/DAAD on the other. They, for example, had to be senior academics capable commanding respect from their colleagues and young enough to last through the piloting phase and assist in the implement of the recommendations before their retirement was due. Before the training the quality assurance officers (QAOs) were sent and asked to read the handbook and submit a written response to the issues therein. During the training, the QAOs were taken through the handbook and covered diverse topics such as what is quality assurance, what is program assessment and how do you conduct it, what are duties and responsibilities of a quality assurance officer, how to deal with resistance, drawing and implementing personal action plans, best practices from Europe, the bologna process and many others. This was also a forum for the QAOs to provide feedback on practice in their specific universities and also their reaction to the handbook. As a result the review and improvement of the handbook begun right then. Their feedback plus that of the Deans and Heads of departments in the subsequent regional and national workshops were collated and used in the drafting of the final handbook before it was published. Some of the changes made to the handbook include models clarity and the size of the handbook. While it was originally envisaged as one monologue, it was eventually published in volumes. Volumes 1 and 2 which cover guidelines for program assessment and guidelines for external program assessment have been published and are available for downloading from the IUCEA website. The others are yet to be published.
workshop was, for example, held in Tanzania, experts from Kenya or Uganda would be invited. These workshops targeted academic deans and heads of academic departments especially those departments or faculties that were participating in the program evaluation. These meetings proved very useful as the QAOs were able to gain support from the line managers and so implementation was made easier. It was reported that in some cases Deans or HODs who came and expressed instant skepticism were won over to the extent that they pledged to go and source funds for the process in their own universities. These workshops were excellent opportunities to make the idea of a regional quality assurance framework gain wide acceptance regionally, nationally and even institutionally.
8.4. The Self-Evaluation Process
9. In Germany, the universities chose common disciplines to subject to the piloting process. The idea was to have subjects that were common to the universities as that would provide an opportunity for comparison as well as make it easy to find peers for external review. The subjects chosen were Business Administration/Business Studies, Agriculture, Computer Science and informatics, Engineering, Human Medicine, Education and Linguistics Studies. The QAOs also drew person action plans aimed at producing self-assessment reports by an agreed, after about six months. The QAOs had to organise internal trainings in their own universities, assist in the formation of teams, follow up the process and ensure self-assessment reports were delivered on time. There were reports of resistance especially based on extra workload without extra remuneration, simple resistance to change, and budgetary constraints in the universities. In spite of these difficulties, most universities were able to deliver reports of varying quality, which is to be expected. It is important to note that regional workshops were held in which universities were given feedback by the experts before being allowed to return home and improve the reports so that they would be useful to the external reviewers.
8.5. The Peer Review
10. The project envisaged program evaluation and improvement based on a multi-stage process beginning with self-evaluation, followed a peer evaluation and then finally universities drawing and implementing improvement plans based on both the SAR and the peer reports. Given that the concept of program evaluation in such a detailed and systematic manner was fairly foreign to the region, there were also not many experienced peer reviewers. While many of the professionals had played key roles as external examiners few of them had experience as peer reviewers.
11. The peers were therefore selected on the basis of their academic and professional competence in their areas of expertise and were nominated by their own universities. The IUCEA, and internal committee on quality assurance was mandated to vet then proposed candidates by studying their CVs. The selected experts were then given a two days training touching on a range of issues related to the peer review process: introduction to quality and quality assessment; higher Education in the East African Region; intercultural and integration issues; formulation of the frame of reference for each programme; discussion on the role and functions of assessment committees; discussion and sharing of experiences on areas of recognising and solving resistance; diplomatic communication; and discussions on how to deal with qualitative methods. This was also a time to ensure that each peer groups took time to learn to work together as a team as many of them were meeting together for the first time ever. Each of the peer groups was international in terms of composition which made it possible to borrow from the wealth of experience from European experts while benefiting from the local flavour. In total 57 peer reviewers participated in the process: 52 were from East Africa, 4 from
Germany and 1 from South (Inter-University Council of East Africa, 2010) Africa and so it is evident that the process contributed to capacity building for the region.
12. The visits by peers to universities followed immediately after the two days training. The task of the peers was clearly defined but the success of implementation varied from group to group and even from university to university. Although, for example, the peers were made to understand they were to function as colleagues rather than inspectors and that their responsibility was to gauge the extent to which the handbook was being implemented within the context of the mission and vision of the target universities, the external evaluators say that “the peer review reports examined tend to be quite rigid, with excessively detailed and prescriptive recommendations” (Lemaitre, Martos, & Teichler, 2011). However, in a review of the process through questionnaires to universities, 87.9% of the respondents said they found the peer review reports useful (Kuria & Grieb, 2011). In essence the process was productive even though a number of difficulties were experienced. Some of the challenges encountered included logistics in terms of transport, accommodation, poor infrastructure, financial difficulties where some universities were not able to meet the cost of peer review even though it was highly subsidized, resistance in some universities, and poor commitment on the part of some peers hence leading to the delay their reports to the universities.
8.6. Improvement Plans by Universities
13. According to Kuria and Grieb (2011) 87.9% of the universities reported that they were implementing improvement plans based on the SARs and the recommendations made by peer reviewers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that programme curriculums and pedagogical methods and practices have been reviewed to reflect the changes that were recommended. Some universities, for example, have reported requiring students to undertake industrial attachment before graduation in contrast to previous practice where it was voluntary.
8.7. Multiplication
14. Many universities found the process so useful that they subjected more than one program to evaluation and others have begun to plan the evaluation of all the other programs using the IUCEA/DAAD model as provided in the jointly developed QA handbook. In one meeting, a dean reported that the self-evaluation process felt like “standing naked in front of a mirror and examining yourself”. For the first time, they had a chance to critically and objectively evaluate their programs. While clearly the situation has improved with training of the 47 QAOs and the 52 peer reviewers, the need for capacity building is clearly required if all universities in the region are to be able to effectively carry out program evaluation in the now more than 100 member universities of the Inter-University Council. In terms of multiplication, it is clear that many universities that did not take place in the pilot process are interested in subjecting their own programs to the same process. In May 2011, the IUCEA and the development partners, HRK, DIES, and the University of Oldenburg held a
9.
LESSONS FROM THE EXPERIENCE
15. The IUCEA/DAAD QA initiative project gave the participants a fairly good indication of the state of higher education in East Africa. First it is clear that higher education systems in the region is complex and diverse internationally as well intra-nationally. The degree programs vary from country to country and even even within countries in terms of grading systems, program hours, length of course (3- 4 years), curriculums even with the same degree names, program structures, admission criteria, and student workload amongst other key areas. Secondly, however, in spite of the complexities and differences, the universities also share similar challenges. Some of these challenges include funding difficulties with public universities relying on governments with low budgets on education and private universities relying heavily on student fees which are not enough to pay staff and also improve infrastructure. This complicates the matter further because many bright students cannot afford university education and some are forced to drop out of the system because of financial difficulties. Most of the universities are experience staff shortages such many programs are run without senior personnel staff members at PhD level and above, large classes resulting from shortage of staff and poor ICT infrastructure due to the heavy investments required. Poor infrastructure also means that the universities do not have a conducing teaching and learning environment.
10.
EVALUATION BY EXTERNAL EXPERTS
16. The IUCEA/DAAD project has also been subjected to evaluation by external experts against a framework modelled along the same lines as the QA project. A team of three international experts drawn from Africa, Europe and Latin America were invited to carry out a mid-term evaluation of the project. Maria Jose Lemaitre, the Latin America brought a wealth of experience as Executive Director of CINDA (a network of universities in Latin America and Europe. She had also had had experience as chair of “Iberoamerican Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, RIACES” and was at that time also “the President of the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education, INQAAHE”; “member of the International Commission of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation of the United Sates (CHEA)” and “member of the Advisory Council of ANECA” (Lemaitre, Martos, & Teichler, 2011).
17. Narciso Matos, the African member of the team brought experience as “a former Vice Chancellor of the University Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique”; “former Secretary General of the Association of African Universities”, and “former Director of International Development at the Carnegie Corporation of New York”. At the time of the review, he was “Executive Director of the Foundation for Community Development, Mozambique”. Finally the team were joined by Ulrich Teichler, a “professor and former Director of the International Centre for Higher Education Research of the University of Kassel (INCHER-Kassel), Germany”. Having served as “Chairman of the Consortium for Higher Education Researchers (CHER) and President of the European Association for Institutional Research (EAIR) ”, and being member of the board of the International Academy of Education he brought his vast experience and skills in education and research to help in the evaluation of the process. The high powered team was brought in to ensure the process was going to be of the highest possible standards and that successes as well as failures would be identified and a viable way forward proposed to further implement the remaining phase of the project and improve on the experience so far. The process of evaluation followed the IUCEA/DAAD project formulae where the the African and European project partners were given the opportunity and responsibility of appoint a self-assessment team who produced an SAR. There were therefore two SARs, one from European stakeholders and one from African stakeholders. The experts were then given the SARs and invited to visit selected universities in East Africa to assess the success of the project. Every attempt was made to ensure that there was a wide array of universities visited from each of the East African countries with a mix of public, private, rural and urban universities. Before visiting the universities, however, the team of experts begun by reading the SARs and holding consultation and interview sessions with the writers of the SARs as well as key drivers of the project in Nairobi. In their visits to Universities they held meetings with vice-chancellors, senior academics, QAOs writers of the university SARs, students, administrators and anyone else they felt they needed to interview. They were accompanied by representatives from NRAs whose job was to assist with such logistics as communication, transport, and accommodation. Their final report was discussed with the project partners and eventually presented to vice-chancellors of member universities of the IUCEA at an annual board meeting in Burundi where the two volumes of the handbook were also officially launched by the president of Burundi. This was another way of making sure that all the member universities of the IUCEA fully understood the progress, achievements and challenges of the project and to give the process wider regional acceptance beyond the few universities that had participated in the process.
and pointing to the need to “review the curriculum of study programs” (Lemaitre, Martos, & Teichler, 2011).
19. At the same time, the experts felt that some issues needed much further thought and deliberations. They felt that the sustainability of the process needed attention as it would not be viable to have a team of six people visiting one program in an institution. Universities in East Africa, mainly poorly funded by governments or through school fees from poor students would not be able to sustain the process. They felt that the training of peer reviewers needed to be “thoroughly revised” to make them refrain from imposing an “implicit model of model of quality”, and to encourage the development of a “special kind of ‘culture’ in which external reviews are seen as contributions to improvement, and not as threats”. It was felt that in some cases this is the impression that had been created by the visiting peer reviewers. In their view this attempt at imposition of a “implicit model of quality” may have been avoided if there had been sufficient discussions on the concept of quality itself especially in reference to idea of “fitness for purpose” and “fitness of purpose”. The reviewers also felt that there was a need to focus more on the “the relationship between institutional management and quality development and therefore the project should have had a stronger focus on quality management issues”.
20. On the strength of their findings the experts made some recommendations which have been into consideration in the planning of future activities of the project. Some of the recommendations that they made include the need for training of trainers so that capacity building in terms of QA experts in the region can be expanded through use of those already trained in the project, the development of training materials arising from identified deficiencies of the current publications, such as the paucity of evaluation or assessment tools or literature on such issues as tracer studies; identification of further training needs by the QA and the evaluators specifically gave the examples of “quality management, curriculum development and modes of teaching and learning” (Lemaitre, Martos, & Teichler, 2011); improved training of external reviewes including giving them opportunities to send them as observers in peer reviews visits conducted by experienced peers so that they can learnt both hard and soft skills.
11.
THE STATUS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN
EAST AFRICA: EVIDENCE FROM THE
PROJECT SO FAR
21. The findings from the project confirms that indeed if there is to be a regional and international compatibility of qualifications earned in East African universities, a regional quality assurance framework is needed. The SARs and the peer review reports indicate that the higher education system in the region is complex even intra-nationally with universities modelling their curricula against different countries: French, British, American, and sometimes of mixture of different systems. This means that programs are very diverse even when they bear the same name. The programs reflect differences in terms of students workload, use of terms like credits, units, grading systems, student assessment methods, credit transfer policies, admission criteria, program structures, name of degrees and many others. Student and labour mobility can only be improved if a system is in place to ensure comparability and mutual recognition across the region. The universities are also facing similar challenges in terms of funding, paucity of senior staff with PhD qualifications, limited and poor infrastructure with some universities having no offices for teaching staff for example, ICT problems such slow connectivity, and large classes. Cooperation in the context of the East African community under aegis of the Inter-university Council of East Africa may provide opportunities for universities to exchange and share skilled and may be even facilities for the mutual improvement programs within the region.
12.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER?
22. In many ways, the weaknesses or shortcomings identified in the external experts’ report as well as the European and East Africa self-assessment reports indicate areas in which things could have been done better. In a project such as this, there are bound to lessons learnt and possible areas of improvement. Indeed, the IUCEA/DAAD QA project has identified some of those areas and are being addressed in future activities under the project.
23. The experts for, example, righty observe that one of the key strategies should be the “establishment of networking opportunities with stakeholders in the quality assurance effort: government officials, higher education leaders and national regulatory agencies on the one hand”; and on the hand universities, quality assurance officers, regulatory agencies should exchange notes on the implementation QA in the region. Perhaps the initiative should have pushed for greater political involvement such that there would be stated government positions and support for the process in the manner of the bologna process. It is instructive that with reference to the national policy statements, the reviewers said “The reviewers understand that the Project does not intend to work directly in any of these areas. However, it must work with the IUCEA and with the national governments in order to develop the necessary alignments that will make quality assurance a part of the national and regional policy, and not an independent – and therefore, less effective – component of institutional practice.” Although the IUCEA is a strong link between Universities and the EAC, the involvement of officials from the EAC could perhaps have been stronger.
24. In the project, there has been talk of the possibility of developing a quality label for universities that have participated in the IUCEA/DAAD QA project. However the modalities of such a label have not been developed and dialogue surrounding that possibility has not yet taken place to an acceptable level. Yet, in order for an East African QA framework to gain greater currency and support, we feel that university that subject themselves to the frameworks should surely be seen to benefit from the system. This way the framework would be seen by universities to have added value regionally besides what universities have traditionally been doing in the attempt to assure quality of their programs. Perhaps the pursuit of an IUCEA quality label could have been more strongly embedded in the project that it is now.
25. Although the project did a great job in terms of capacity building by training at least 47 QAOs, that is really a drop in the ocean as it means only 47 universities out of the more than 100 IUCEA member higher education institutions have a fully trained QAO. There is obviously the need to train more people in the area of quality assurance so that even in one single university, there should be more than one person who can competently handle matters of quality assurance. Indeed one of the setbacks suffered in the process of this project were cases of the single trained persons being promoted in their own institutions, resigning, or simply leaving the university and which made follow up of the pilot project very difficult. If there had been more than one person trained, it would have been much easier to proceed with the project in such circumstances. There is therefore the need to support capacity building in the universities beyond the QA officer and perhaps this will be enhanced after the training of a third cohort of QAOs and the training of trainers in the upcoming activities under the project. Although there were many national QA workshops targeted at universities, these mainly brought together personnel in programs that were already participating in the pilot project. There perhaps should have been a greater focus on the multiplication of the project and hence national workshop targeting people outside the participating programs should have been deliberately involved. However, the omission is understood in the sense that there was a pilot project to accomplish and this pilot had specific programs in mind. We hope that this issue will be addressed once the training of trainers takes place and those trained begin to carry out further training in the region. It is envisaged that this will help to enhance effective multiplication of the project.
been a bit too ambitious to expect that they would have been excellent in their performance after only two days training. The training therefore should have been planned for a little bit longer time with provision for the peers to participate, as suggested by the reviewers, in a peer review conducted by experienced expert. The IUCEA/DAAD of course attempted to provide for such learning experience by the provision for an experienced peer reviewer in each team but the time for interaction between them was perhaps too short. They met for the first time in the training and two days later, they were working as a team in the field in a cultural environment that may have been a bit alien for the experienced peers mainly drawn from Europe. In the context of the project, more focused training of peers should be a focus of future activities within the project and if not possible, IUCEA would do well to organize study visits for regional peers to avail them opportunities to dialogue more with people who have experience in peer reviewing.
27. The publication and distribution of relevant literature was particularly difficult. The experts rightfully recommended that the initiatives find a faster way of developing and distributing written material in support of the process. To-date only two volumes have been published and distributed but the distribution itself has not been effected as effectively as it should be done. Volumes one and two of the handbook, for the handbook was broken down into five volumes in response to feedback in the national and regional workshops have been published and are available for downloading from the IUCEA website, http://www.iucea.org. However, the hard copies are yet to find their place in every member university of the IUCEA. In future, the initiative must come up with more effective ways of publishing and distributing the handbook.
13.
CONCLUSION
28. There is no doubt that the IUCEA/DAAD project has had and will continue to have a strong impact on the development of higher education in East Africa. The success of the initiative in each country or university will of course be determined by the resilience and commitment of the respective entities. The IUCEA as the organ of the EAC tasked with the responsibility of ensuring quality of higher education in the region will be the other key player. The IUCEA, the respective countries, individual higher education institutions and national regulatory agencies will determine the long term sustenance of the project but it is clear that the international recognition of qualifications in the EAC region will be enhanced by embracing the regional quality assurance framework once it’s fully implemented. This implementation will be enhanced if a quality label is developed and approved by IUCEA and also accepted and sort after by universities in the region. In the long run, higher education in East Africa will gain greater recognition and acceptance international which will ensure smoother student mobility locally and internationally.
14.
B
IBLIOGRAPHY
INTER-UNIVERSITY COUNCIL OFEAST AFRICA. 2010. IUCEA –DAAD Quality Assurance Project on Development Of an East African Higher Education Quality Assurance Frame Work.
KURIA, M., & GRIEB, I. (2011). The IUCEA/DAAD QA Project and Beyond: A Study of the Participating Universities. Nairobi: Unpublished.
LEMAITRE, M. J., MARTOS, N., & TEICHLER, U. (2011). Review of the East African-German Pilot Project of Enhancing Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Unpublished.
