Modelling of quality assurance system in the relation "University-Industry"

Zarko Spasic

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

University of Belgrade

11120 Belgrade, Kraljice Marije 16, Serbia,

 

Serbian Universities are on the way to the European integration on which the European dimension of the Quality Assurance (QA) and future pan European accreditation must be reached in order to be included in the common European Higher Education space. The TEMPUS project "Implementing Quality Assurance in Serbian Universities" - IQASU has to define National Quality Assurance System at institutional, national and European level with reference and specific QA models in the scope of the national qualification framework.

The Project Consortium consists of all five Serbian state Universities and six European Universities (Universidade do Minho, National University of Ireland - Galway, Georg-August Universität - Göttingen, Friedrich-Alexander Universität - Erlangen, Università degli studi di Palermo and University of Sheffield). All European Universities express their willingness to exchanging academic values and contributing to the efforts of Serbian Universities to meet the challenge of necessary changes. The short-term outcomes are to show clear step in progress with QA activities, with speeding-up the realisation given in the Project work plan. But long-term outcomes are to establish the Quality Assurance System with systems or engineering approach, taking into account boundaries of environment.

The Project will establish 5 Centres of Excellence for Quality Assurance at the university level and 14 Centres at all "pilot" or "reference" faculties. Organisation of all centres within the scope of one university will be polycentric with integrated data/knowledge base and unique output reports on the basis of statistical analysis and data/knowledge retrieving programmes. Communication between all Serbian universities will give summary output reports for relevant government, society institutions and international associations.

University and industry represent important business environments to each other, but by their mutual cooperation they also have joint business environments - world markets of products, services and knowledge. The products from the university are experts of all profiles that would be expected to contribute to the later development of industry. That is why particular importance is given to defining the Model of Common Business Excellence. According to the joint business environment this is a three-dimensional model [2] whose dimensions are {Business type - Organisational level - Functions}. The entire state space of joint business operations of University and Industry has been fulfilled with common excellence building blocks:

block A {Education - Strategic - Quality}, block B {Industry - Tactic - Quality} and block C {Industry - Operations - Management}. The Building blocks are inter-connected by interface blocks and by information flows that connect them, providing transfer of information and knowledge.

The Model includes the complex problem of quality assurance and enhancement for all universities, and activities (education, research, service management), taking into consideration the industry as its business environment. The system of integrated quality assurance also refers to financial procedures and administrative activities (service management) in the integral information and communication system with a unified data/knowledge base of the University and distributed data/knowledge bases of faculties/departments in order to enhance efficiency of information resource utilisation.

Quality assurance of an integrated system with regard to the "University - Industry/Economy" relation implies establishment of business and information-communication connections of academic institutions (faculties, departments, schools, institutes, centres and libraries) with their business environment (industry or economy). The relations would be unilateral or bilateral and refer to education, research, development, consultation and definition of admission plans for students in communication with the relevant ministries and the Rector's collegiums. For instance, student admission quotas for certain faculties should be set by each respective university (faculties or departments individually) considering their qualitative and quantitative capacities for the flow of students through laboratories and amphitheatres, whereas the relevant ministries are responsible for consideration of the actual needs of the industry/economy. To facilitate realistic admission quotas, tuition fees should be determined exactly for newly enrolled years or repeated years, with every faculty producing cost lists.

In order to achieve the Project's set of goals, the University and Industry should have joint E&R space, developing special and unique values of corporative culture and a quality culture in the strict conditions of international competition and international comparison. Space for improvement of total business operations in the joint work of the university and industry may be shown in diagram. Business operations of the university have been monitored in the co-ordinated system {education - research - total income}, and the movement from the initial state to the current year is reflected by the chart of overall business operations, together with the index of income increase. Business operations of industry or economic enterprises have been monitored in the co-ordinated system with the axes {new product - new technology - turnover and investment} at the moment when the main problems are transformation of ownership and transition. For the universities and industry, this movement through defined joint state space means a successful path towards European integrations.

The objectives of changes in the higher education reform will be achieved through continual feedback with the University's educational and business environment. The University, once adjusted to standards for European integration, is a basis for the development of a knowledge oriented society with experts for new working challenges. Interaction between higher education and industry/economy is an important segment in the forthcoming reform and in the integrated quality assurance in research activities. Continual and distance learning should be a communication link among economy oriented faculties in order to provide development of experts for new working contents.

National Quality Assurance Systems should include responsibilities of bodies and institutions, evaluation of programmes and institutions, certification of comparable Q-procedures and standards, procedure of accreditation as well as international promotion of the Bologna principles. The IQASU project has to establish monitoring mechanisms for gradual improvement of Higher Education system in Serbia, to harmonize partial reform strategies of Serbian Universities and their faculties to the national strategy, to increase the efficiency of education system, to establish the relevance of the programmes with respect to the national/economy needs, to allow the students to select their own route of study and professional training, to increase students influence in education process, to integrate programmes of study with research and training activities, to specify and supervise the recognition procedure, to implement Quality Assurance System for continual improvements as well as to reach the readiness of Serbian academic institutions and programmes for their national and international accreditations.