Types and Purposes of Instruments for Higher Education Institutions' Quality Assurance

Abstract

The article aims at identifying the roles of instruments for higher education institutions’ quality assurance. We define types and differences of the instruments and we present different theories of the instrument’s purposes. It was found that the instruments for higher education institutions’ quality assurance have just two roles in the institutional quality management: improvement and accountability. These two purposes are not interchangeable, but complementary and in the hierarchical position to one another. Besides, we discovered that the assessment of the higher education institution quality often does not include the applicability assessment of the higher education institution results. This is an external view on quality that is the most reliable, but in practice the most neglected.