Agency for Development of Higher Education and Quality Assurance of Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Bosnia and Herzegovina
Agency for Development of Higher Education and
Quality Assurance of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Embedding Quality Assurance in Doctoral
Education EQADE November 15 17, 2011
University of Heidelberg
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Institutional Establishing of HEA

• Council of Ministers decision on Establishing the
  Agency March 2008
• Appointment of the Management October 2008
• Appointment of the Agencys Steering board
  December 2008
• Agency is and independent public organisation
  with two main duties
• to serve as an independent state institution in
  charge of the development of specific provisions
  and recommendations for higher education such as
  standards, norms, etc., and
• to provide quality assurance of higher education
  sistems in BH trough State register of
  accredited institutions, standards and criterias.

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Organizational Structure
Total employment 35 Curent employment 15
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Responsibilities

HEI Develop internal quality assurance systems, carry out self-review, present evidence to the quality assurance agency
HEA BH Develop and agree criteria and procedures for external quality assurance, carry out external reviews and produce reports with judgments and recommendations
MoE Receive reports and recommendations and make decisions based, in part, on this information
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Accreditation Ministry

• Note Education in BiH is in the jurisdiction of
  entities,while in Federation of BiH is in the
  jurisdicton of cantons
• For the Ministry, accreditation means formal
  approval by the state authority of an
  institution, with a confirmation of its funding,
  its range of programmes, its management, and its
  accountability through effective quality systems.
  
• Here, accreditation means a decision about the
  status of the institution and its relationship
  with the state body. This is a governmental
  decision which exercises the political
  responsibility to confirm the quality of the
  education provided, and to protect society from
  inadequate or bogus providers of education.
• It will therefore apply to all the HEIs, private
  and public, that participate in the national
  higher education system. To make this decision,
  the Ministry will rely upon evidence and
  recommendations relating to the quality of
  provision that are communicated by the HEA.

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Accreditation HEA

• For the quality assurance agency (HEARSAA)
  accreditation means a process, supported by
  agreed criteria and procedures, for the external
  evaluation of a higher education institution and
  in particular evaluation of its internal quality
  assurance systems, producing recommendations.
• Accreditation can also relate to individual study
  programmes within an institution but at this
  stage in the BiH context, the focus is on
  institutional accreditation.

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Accreditation HEI

• For the higher education institution,
  accreditation may refer to number of things its
  initial application for recognition, its
  engagement in the external quality assurance
  review, or (most important) its successful
  recognition by the state authority.

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• These three aspects of accreditation are linked
  in the BiH model through other relationships and
  communications, of these the most important are
• the application from the institution to the
  Ministry for accreditation
• the self-evaluation from the institution to the
  Experts panel
• the recommendation from the Agency to the
  Ministry
• and finally the confirmation from the Ministry
  to the Agency that the institution can be
  included in the Register of Accredited
  institutions.

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Being listed in state registry of accredited HEI,
with full membership of HEA in ENQA
MoE or Agency
Accreditation
PoE/Agency
Standards Rules for internal QA
HEI
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Criteria for accreditation HEI
1 Development and strategy of the HEI
2 Management, internal quality assurance and quality culture
3 Procedures for QA of study programmes
4 Student assessment procedures
5 Human resources
6 Quality of physical resources
7 The information systems
8 Public information
9 International relations
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Open issues

• Involvement of relevant ministries (ESG 3.6)
  sustainabilty
• Relation between licencing and accreditation
• What is Life of non accredited institutions and
  programs
• How to integrate external evaluation/accreditation
  results and reccomendation done by other ENQA
  agencies into national system (changes of FLHE in
  BH)
• Criteria for expert and pool of experts (much
  precise, ESG II)
• Criteria for internal and external QA related
  with Study programmes
• Process of accreditation according to ESG 2.2,
  3.2 3.6
• Link with development of NQF

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Agency for Development of Higher Education and
Quality Assurance BA 78000 Banja Luka, Blvd.
Stepe Stepanovica 11 P 387 51 430 510, F 387
51 462 302 e-mail info_at_hea.gov.ba