Abstract:

In South Africa it is a statutory requirement for higher education institutions to participate in external quality assurance (EQA) processes which may be an Institutional Quality Audit or Review of qualifications, programmes and academic support functions conducted by regulatory authorities and professional bodies to verify the veracity of the claims an institution makes about its internal quality management systems (IQMS). The regulators or professional bodies work on set criteria that has to be adhered to by both private and public higher education institutions. Adherence to these criteria may at times be hindered by limited capacity at the institutions and/or a lack of buy-in from internal and external stakeholders. This paper addresses the importance of building participation by stakeholders and evaluating the value of stakeholder participation in quality assurance processes.

The paper, reports experiences and lessons from organising two Institutional Reviews for a mega, multi-campus open distance higher education institution in the South. The two reviews involved international peers and made far reaching decisions on areas that need the University to pay focussed attention to. It is the author’s views that these processes were conducted a through the participatory approach and the intention was to ensure maximum involvement and engagement of stakeholders of the institution.

For determining the success or failure of stakeholder participation through the participatory approach in the university’s EQA and IQA processes, we measured ourselves against the principles of effective engagement as espoused by Gardner, Dowd, Mason and Ashworth.

Keywords:

Quality Assurance, Quality Management, Internal Quality Assurance, External Quality Assurance, participatory approach, stakeholder engagement.