The National Entity for Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education (NEAQA) is member under review of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) since February 22, 2018 (as legal successor of the Commission for Accreditation and Quality Assurance – CAQA) and now is applying for full ENQA membership. The ENQA is evaluating if the NEAQA fulfils the requirements of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and thus the criteria for the ENQA membership. The ENQA’s review will also be used for the NEAQA’s application for registration on the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR).
As a part of the review process, the review panel nominated by ENQA visited the NEAQA from 9th to 11th of October 2019. The panel was composed of the following members:
- Doris Herrmann, Managing Director, Agency for Quality Assurance through Accreditation of Study Programmes, Germany – Chair, quality assurance professional (ENQA nominee)
- Đurđica Dragojević, Head of the Department for Higher Education Quality, Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, Croatia – Secretary, quality assurance professional (ENQA nominee)
- Pedro Teixeira, Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto; Director, Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (Cipes), Portugal – Panel member, academic (EUA nominee)
- Ignas Gaižiūnas, Student in Physics, study programme Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Vilnius University, Lithuania – Panel member, student (ESU nominee)
This review panel has been coordinated by Goran Daković form the ENQA Secretariat, who also participated at the site visit to the NEAQA.
The ENQA review panel was welcomed by the NEAQA’s director professor Jelena Kocović and had numerus of meetings with representatives of the Working Group responsible for the self-assessment report (SAR) of the NEAQA, the Management Board of the NEAQA, the Commission for Accreditation and Quality Assurance (CAQA) of the NEAQA, the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), the Conference of Universities of Serbia (CONUS), the Conference of Academies of Applied Studies and Colleges of Academic Studies of Serbia (CAASS), the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (MoESTD), the Students Conferences of Universities (SCONUS), the Students Conference of Academies of Applied Studies and Colleges of Academic Studies of Serbia (SCAASS), students involved in external quality assurance processes, the NEAQA staff, employers’ organisation (Serbian Chamber of Commerce) and employers involved in external quality assurance processes, experts involved in external quality assurance processes, international experts involved in external quality assurance processes and the higher education institutions, which were part of the pilot accreditations. After all this meetings the review panel welcomed the progress that NEAQA has made since 2017 and previous self-assessment report (SAR), specially that the NEAQA is independent legal entity and that new procedures were adopted and published on February 28, 2019 in accordance with the requirements of ESG and the Law on higher education of the Republic of Serbia. The new procedures changed the accreditation system regarding the role of the peer reviewers, as suggested by ENQA and EQAR report about CAQA/NEAQA in 2018. During this process the review panel has noted some shortcomings and informed the NEAQA about these findings with recommendation in order to overcome the shortcomings.
The evaluation of the NEAQA will be finished in February 2020, when the ENQA Board will considerate whether membership of the NEAQA should be confirmed.
You can find more information about the review of the NEAQA on the ENQA’s website: https://enqa.eu/index.php/the-national-entity-for-accreditation-and-quality-assurance-in-higher-education-neaqa/