An approach to the quality assessment of higher education institutions via knowledge management principles

Abstract

Quality assurance of higher education institutions and the objective evaluation of quality is an actual and open issue today. This problem is of interest to all developed and developing countries which are connecting their economic and educational futures with a modern, efficient higher educational system. Today's world is dominated by a generally accepted and recognized by the ranking and rating system of the Anglo-Saxon environment which is largely determined by scientometric indicators. In Europe, there are still countries that do not apply this system by deliberately ignoring it. From a knowledge management perspective it is therefore interesting to analyze the system used for evaluating colleges and universities. There have been attempts toapply holistic and systematic approaches to governing strategic, operational and crisis management, physically and financially together with elusive asset flows of university organizations and leadership within science, research, education as well as management and administrative institutions. One of the key principles of "knowledge management" is to effectively link those who know with those who need to know in order to transfer personal knowledge and individual expertise to the organization. In doing so, one of the aims of knowledge management is to measure and compare in order to create incentives to accelerate the learning process and to also create a cultural change within the organization. In this paper we analyze the concept of the quality of universities/higher education institutions - which are evaluated and measured in individual evaluation systems, why it is handled in the system with this tool and what the weaknesses of the tool are in the system. We point out the Common Assessment Framework - CAF as a tool to enhance knowledge management in a university institution, the collection and sharing of information, practices, drawing conclusions, self evaluation and external evaluation by the example of our faculty, which we have specifically addressed. We are going to document welldefined and prepared internal processes within the institution, as a result of the application of CAF- this has resulted in a 'drag' regarding knowledge and an increase of external "factors" (citations, publication activities, project success, etc.), under which the faculty/university receives a higher ranking in the assessment charts. We also compare the evaluation of the quality of university institutions within the world with that of Slovakia.