Quality Assurance Management: February 2012

Sunday, February 12, 2012

QAM Policy Briefs

The QAM Project has produced a a Policy Brief entitled “Quality Assurance Systems in Selected Universities of Europe: Lessons for RUFORUM”. Please click the link below download it:

QAM Policy Brief

Fundamental components of RUFORUM’s Strategic and Operational Plans are to develop competitive high quality regional MSc and PhD programmes for ECSA. These programmes are now being implemented. They draw resources from regional and global centres of knowledge through partnerships brokered and maintained by RUFORUM. Programme implementation requires a quality assurance mechanism that fosters high standards within the spirit of learning and co-sharing of knowledge. This brief draws on a Scoping Study commissioned by the RUFORUM Secretariat among selected Universities in Europe to draw lessons for a regional quality assurance and credit accumulation transfer system. Please refer to the attached document for more details

About Us

ACP-EU Cooperation Programme in Higher Education - Project 9ACP RPR 12# 33

This project is funded under the European Union supported EDULINK programme. The Project Coordinator is the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) – Kampala

Implementing Partners
Egerton University (EU) - Kenya
Makerere University – Uganda
University of Malawi – Malawi
University of Zambia (UNZA) - Zambia
Montpelier Sup Agro

Associate Partners
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA)
Network of European Agricultural (Tropically and sub tropically oriented) Universities and Scientific complexes Related with Agricultural development (NATURA)

The duration of the project is 36 Months
EU Co-funding: EUR 499,715.68
Total Budget: EUR 587,900.80

Contact Person
Prof. Adipala Ekwamu- Executive Secretary
Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM),
Tel: +256 414535939 Fax: +256 414543153:
E-mail: secretariat@ruforum.org

Background and Objectives

Background
The action is building institutional capacity for human resource development in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) region. In the ECSA region, the capacity to train high quality human resources by universities is weak with no/less attractive PhD programmes. Most of the PhD training where available, is largely by research, which limits analytical rigor and broad perspective, which is normally imparted through course work. This problem is compounded by high attrition rates of qualified staff (estimated at 25,000 per annum in sub-Saharan Africa), the over-aging population of experienced national experts with the majority in senior positions (estimated at 65% by FARA) over retirement age or due to retire in the next five years which creates an attractive opportunity for professional development of the young. There are also inadequacies in resource use, and limited funding. This action creates opportunity to build capacity to train high quality human resources by HEIs in the ECSA through the introduction of focused coursework and other learning opportunities (screened by a vigorous quality assessment programme).

The Partners (and Associates) in this action propose to strengthen the capacity of ECSA universities to train high quality PhD graduates, by mounting short regional courses in critical cross-cutting areas to broaden analytical skills and development perspectives of graduate students. The action seeks to strengthen teaching and management skills of lecturers, university managers and policy makers. It also supports training in other areas not efficiently addressed by individual national universities.
Overall Objective
The overall objective of the action is to enhance capacities of universities in ECSA to conduct high quality and relevant graduate training, especially at PhD level. The purpose of this action is to strengthen capacity for shared training, quality assurance and knowledge management for lesson up-scaling. The critical auxiliary problems include issues related to training such as credits transfer systems, quality assurance mechanisms, resource mobilization, competitiveness of the graduate training programmes and need for new teaching delivery and management methods that emphasise facilitation and team building.

Target Groups
The action targets three groups namely:
• Teaching staff in the departments that offer PhD graduate programmes, the majority of whom had their training locally and went through the programme largely by research
• PhD students from the ECSA HEIs.
• ECSA HEIs management staffs who head the institutions and the departments that handle graduate programmes.
• Policy makers in the relevant ministries that support education and agriculture.

The action benefits several sectors and institutions through development of institutional and human resource capacity