Đakovo, (IKA/TU) – According to the results of the project QualityWatch: The Active Role of Civil Society Organizations in Monitoring and Promoting Quality in Higher Education, conducted by the Institute for the Development of Education, and co-financed by the European Union and the Office for Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Đakovo is the most transparent institution of higher education in Osijek-Baranja County.
The Catholic Faculty of Theology in Đakovo is exceptionally proud of the results of this independently conducted study, which spur it to even greater dedication to the culture of spreading quality, based on ensuring the availability of relative indices of quality, which are created by all—taking a direct or indirect part in the quality system of higher education through internal or external influence.
The study was conducted at the institutions of higher education in Split-Dalmatia County, Osijek-Baranja County and the City of Zagreb. In order to present the information on transparency clearly, an index of transparency was created using an external quality assurance system and three indicators of transparency. The indicators of transparency are related to the public access to procedures, results of the reaccreditation procedures and auditing (external system of assuring and improving quality), public access to information on internal organization, structure and the regulations of the quality management system (internal system for assuring and improving quality at institutions of higher education), and the quality of the data that resulted from the re-accreditation procedures and audit (Agency for Science and Higher Education—AZVO).
The results of the study are available in a guide for monitoring the transparency of the quality assurance of higher education, entitled “The Role of Transparency in Improving the Quality of Higher Education,” and is primarily intended for organizations in the civil society that aspire through their actions to influence change in the area of higher education. However, it can also serve as a practical manual for researchers, public policy makers and the general public interested in following and understanding the practice of quality assurance in higher education (e.g., university students, secondary school students, parents, academic personnel etc.).
The Institute for the Development of Education carried out the project QualityWatch from 2014 to 2017 in partnership with the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights (Osijek), the Association MI (Split), the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Rijeka, the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences and Universitas—Society for the Development of Higher Education. The international experts in the project come from the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) of the University of Twente, the University of Graz and the University of Ljubljana.