Abstract:

Standards and guidelines for ensuring the quality of education in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015) have become a driving force in increasing the attractiveness and competitiveness of higher education in the conditions of Slovak universities. The paper presents the path of the University of Zilina (UNIZA) to achieving the target state. This target state is defined by identifying the changes that need to be made to UNIZA and to define very precisely the cooperation of quality assurance policy makers in the field with all stakeholders involved in the "UNIZA higher education ecosystem". The paper outlines the analysis of the current state of solution of this issue and a general description of the current Internal Quality Assurance System at UNIZA, which is currently fundamentally revised to cover all related legislation that have been adopted in the Slovak Republic. As this revision process is associated with typical manifestations of "change management", the authors point to some selected issues related to internal quality assurance at UNIZA and preparation for external quality assessment of higher education, which is carried out in Slovakia by the Slovak Accreditation Agency for Higher Education. The paper also develops a discussion on the process of revision of the current internal system, along with the presentation of examples of specific procedures and methods that UNIZA used in this process.

Keywords:

Quality standards, the process of change, higher education.