| Many countries have entered the mass education stage in the field of higher education since the end of the 20th Century. Along with the remarkable expansion of higher education scale, a series of problems about higher education quality have drawn increasing attention. To deal with these problems, various models of higher education quality assurance have been carried out. Beneficial reforms have also been conducted in South Africa to promote higher education quality in these years. In order to eliminate the adverse impact of apartheid on higher education, and to provide high quality education to all students, reforms have been adopted by the government since the foundation of The Republic of South Africa in 1994. After years of constant exploration and development, South Africa has built up a complete higher education quality auditing system for quality evaluation, management and improvement. The successful experience of South Africa also can be useful reference to us.Beginning with tracing back the development of higher education quality assurance system in South Africa, this paper presents and analyses institutional audits of South Africa in general. Institutional Audits of South Africa is an external quality assurance way performed by the government, in the charge of Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC), a permanent committee of the Council on Higher Education in South Africa. The audit focuses on an institution's policies, systems, procedures, strategies and resources for the management of the quality of the core functions of teaching and learning, research and community engagement, as well as academic support services.19 criteria have been employed as the standards for audits. Quality is defined as fitness for purpose, fitness of purpose, value for money and transformation in the framework of institutional audits.More specifically, institutional audit seeks to improve an institution's capacity for quality management of its academic activities in a manner that meets its specified mission, goals and objectives, and engages appropriately with and responds to the expectations and needs of various internal and external constituencies with the help of an international panel. Institutional audits in South Africa has four characteristics, including complete legal framework, encouragement of various institutional missions, fully negotiating and interacting between HECQ and institutions, quantitative presentation of auditing effects.Furthermore, comparative study of the auditing process, feedback questionnaire survey and improvement measures of three universities is conducted in the paper. The three universities are University of Cape Town, the oldest university in South Africa, Rhodes University, one of the smallest universities in South Africa, and University of Stellenbosch in its transformation. Despite of the particular situation and auditing processes, the three universities shares a lot in common. Feedback surveys of the three institutions have showed that the institutional preparation for auditing is more significant than the site visit to campuses. Additionally, audit recommendations for the three ones is very similar, focusing on bolstering the development of quality assurance system within institutions, enhancing institutional attention to the improvement of teaching and learning, reinforcing institutional leaders in their efforts to develop institution-wide quality culture, facilitating cooperation and development within and between academic units about quality assurance and improvement and institutional transformation, country accountability.In conclusion, several pieces of advice are been introduced to promote the following Undergraduate Teaching Assessment in China, such as adopting flexible evaluation standards, emphasizing in bolstering the development of quality assurance system within institutions, changing the role of government, from state-control model to state-supervision model, developing institution-wide quality culture, and establish diversified international panel. |
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