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Abstract
The author deals with a problem of quality of higher education, discussed widely in the Western Europe and the US. She analyzes reasons of the growth of interest in the improvement an measurement of quality for teaching and non-teaching processes occurring in the institutions of higher learning. She discusses the changing role of the State in the management of systems of higher education in the EC. The changes which take place in the steering of higher education reflect political and social trends. A new idea of self-regulation assumes that the government defines general frames in which the universities may develop their own manner of work. Referring to Guy Neave the author states that many European governments shifted their interest from the input to the output of higher education. Introduction of new mechanisms of quality control is a condition of the introduction of new priorities by governments. Mechanisms of the quality improvement in institutions of higher education, and specially a model of management transferred from business to post-secondary education, i.e. TQM, Total Quality Management are presented as well. The largest part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of mechanisms and procedures of quality assessment in the institutions of higher learning. Two extreme models of quality control are presented: one, by an external authority, by self-governing community of fellows, as well as mechanisms of peer review and accreditation. The author states that now there is some resistance against application of only quantitative criteria to the evaluation of quality of institutions of higher learning. The search for other means of measurement of their quality is based on a strong belief that quality is made of such unmeasurable elements as scholarly climate, atmosphere of work, innovativeness and creativity. A solution may be found in linking the internal and external control. The two types of control used separately raised several reservations.
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