The Agency for Science and Higher Education and the Accreditation Council's committee have created an enhanced re-accreditation model for the new higher education institutions re-accreditation cycle starting in 2017.
The new model has been aligned with the amended ESG and includes the modified standards for the quality assessment of universities and their constituent units as well as polytechnics and colleges.
The following documents have been drafted and adopted:
- Standards for the evaluation of quality of universities and university constituents in the procedure of re-accreditation of higher education institutions;
- Standards for the evaluation of quality of polytechnics and colleges in the procedure of re-accreditation of higher education institutions;
- Procedure for the re-accreditation of HEIs;
- Tables in the self-evaluation report obtained from the MOZVAG database.
In accordance with the new model, the goal of the next re-accreditation cycle should be to encourage improvements, in accordance with the recommendations for quality improvement resulting from the first cycle of the re-accreditation of higher education institutions. In this context, a higher education institution is viewed as a whole, and the quality of an institution includes the assessment of all HEI’s activities. The new re-accreditation model enables the verification of key, generally accepted standards as well as a quality grade, based on an expert panel report. The available minimum quantitative data are used as input data for drafting an expert panel's report. On the basis of an expert panel’s report and a response of a higher education institution, the Accreditation Council passes an expert opinion on the result of re-accreditation. Using this approach, the key standards, which include the previously used minimum conditions and the new amendments made according to the revised ESG, are included in the quality grade. The result of the evaluation, and ultimately, the outcome of the re-accreditation procedure, depends on the fulfilment of key standards, as well as on the overall quality grade.
The standards have been aligned with the ESG, while the assessment of compliance with each standard, as well as the overall quality grade and recommendations for quality improvement are passed by an independent expert panel. The new model, using quality and quantitative standards, enables members of an expert panel and the Accreditation Council to make an informed decision on each case, based on the assessment of an extent to which a lower quality of a segment of a HEI’s activity lowers its overall quality.
