The Impact of ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) Assessment on the Quality of Educational Programmes

The creation of the AUN-QA was initiated in 1998 as a network of Chief Quality Officers (CQOs) appointed by the AUN member universities as the focal point for coordinating activities to realise the mission of harmonising educational standards and to seek continuous improvement of academic quality of universities in ASEAN. Since then, AUN-QA has been actively promoting, developing, and implementing quality assurance practices based on an empirical approach where quality assurance practices are shared, tested, evaluated and improved. AUN-QA assessment was inaugurated in December 2007. From 2007 to 2012, 16 AUN-QA assessments covering four countries, 7 universities and 37 programmes were carried out. These 37 programmes were assessed by AUN-QA assessors based on the 15 criteria of the AUN-QA Model at the programme level [1]. To assess the impact of AUN-QA assessments on the quality of educational programmes, an analysis of the results was made using medians and categories of criterion rated based on the AUN-QA Rating Scale. Based on the medians of the AUN-QA criterion rated at the programme level, the number of criteria rated “Better than Adequate” has increased from 1 in 2007 to 13 in 2012. This demonstrates that the quality of the assessed educational programmes at the participating universities has improved over the last 6 years. Recommendations to further improve the quality of the educational programme in the 15 criteria are made.