A Study On The Institutional Evaluation Programme Of European Universtiy Association

To implement higher education evaluation, to establish higher education quality assurance system and to improve the quality of higher education are the core mission of higher education development. The Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) is an independent membership service of the European University Association (EUA). IEP has celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2014. The focus of an IEP evaluation is the institution as a whole and not the individual study programme or unit. It aims to improve the quality and support higher education institutions and systems in developing their capacity for change consistent with institutional autonomy. IEP evaluation teams have carried out around 380 evaluations and follow-up evaluations of diverse higher education institutions in 45 countries worldwide. Besides Europe, institutions from Africa, Japan, Latin America and the Middle East have participated in the Programme, praising its flexibility and responsiveness to the different contexts and their specific challenges. In this case, for higher education evaluation in our country at the exploratory stage, to research and analysis IEP is undoubtedly a powerful way to promote the development of higher education evaluation in our country.First of all, the dissertation depicts the background of creation and its organization and management. It includes Steering Committee, IEP expert pool, evaluation standards and types of evaluation. IEP mainly evaluates the institution’s quality assurance policy, organizational structure and governance, students, teachers, learning information, service to society, internationalization, quality culture and quality assurance and development and so on.Then, the dissertation mainly analyzes the evaluation process of IEP in details. The first step, the institution registers for participation in the Institutional Evaluation Programme and submits the registration form. The second step, the institution undergoes a self-evaluation process and provides IEP with a self-evaluation report on the basis of the IEP guidelines, and answers the following four questions:What is the institution trying to do? How is the institution trying to do it? How does the institution know it works? How does the institution change in order to improve? The third step, the evaluation team conducts twice site visits to the institution and requests any additional information as appropriate. The fourth step, the evaluation team needs to write a final report by highlighting good practices identified and providing recommendations for improvement. The fifth step, the institution registers for a follow-up evaluation to identify the impact that the initial evaluation has had on the institution’s development.Lastly, the dissertation summarizes the successful practices of IEP, such as IEP has comprehensive and concrete guidelines, IEP applies a mission-driven evaluation criteria, the institutions sign up voluntarily, the experience and expertise of the evaluation experts, the good practice of involving students as part of the IEP evaluators’ pool, the diagnostic of evaluation report and follow up evaluation for identifying the initial evaluation effect, the international adaptability of IEP. Then the dissertation explores the main inspiration that China can draw from IEP. The author suggests that our audit evaluation needs to perfect the basic framework, to adjust the indicator system, to build evaluation experts pool, to focus on the institution’s self-evaluation, to pay attention to the students involved in the evaluation, to improve the institution’s self-evaluation report, to promote the re-evaluation, then we can try to output our educational experience.