Potemkin Villages for Assessing the Quality of Education
By 2022, two-thirds of Russian universities had adopted documents on implementating an internal education quality assessment System (IEQAS). However, the quality and applicability of these local regulations remain at a low level.
Researchers Nadezhda Knyaginina and Yevgeny Puchkov analyzed documents on the IEQAS from 361 universities and presented the results of their work at a seminar at the Higher School of Economics.
The issue with quality assessment lies in a skewed focus of research: most universities evaluate their students (85%) and employees (75%), and are much less interested in analyzing educational processes (31.3%). Graduates and their career paths are even less frequently evaluated (3%).
Questionnaires and surveys are the favorite assessment methods in Russian universities. In addition, traditional assessment tools such as attestations and portfolio competitions are still employed, while modern methods based on objective data and indicators are rarely used.
The results of internal assessment rarely lead to specific management decisions at most universities. According to a survey, 80.61% of institutions consider the assessment process to be a means of producing a report that is “filed away”. Two-thirds of universities state that they make changes to their operations, but do not specify the nature of these changes or how they are implemented. Only 19.39% of higher education institutions indicate that they base personnel decisions on assessment outcomes. The researchers conclude that assessment is primarily conducted for reporting purposes rather than to improve work quality.
The speakers also commended the “completeness” of the assessment processes in the documents. A functioning IEQAS document should always address three questions: “who assesses, when and how?”
Only 99 (!!) of the 3,129 processes studied were found to be complete, indicating a low level of quality in the documents themselves and potentially suggesting that the processes described therein are not being implemented in practice.
In 2022, availability of IEQAS became one of the criteria taken into consideration during the process of obtaining state accreditation and accreditation monitoring. Education experts predict a second surge in the proliferation of similar “formally-appearing” IEQAS documents within universities.
18.01.2024
