COLLABORATION IN QUALITY ASSURANCE IN RWANDAN HIGHER EDUCATION: REALITIES, ISSUES, APPROACHES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the East African countries have embarked on a process of implementing quality assurance initiatives in higher education. As a result, quality assurance mechanisms are gradually emerging at continental, regional, national and institutional levels. Regulatory, administrative and pedagogical measures are developed and applied in order to harmonize, coordinate and evaluate the actions of higher education institutions. This paper takes a critical look at fundamental choices related to this commitment. It attempts to highlight the main features of the quality assurance process in Rwanda. The paper attempts to understand how national quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions adapt to their structure and use the instruments that support the quality standards. It aims to study precisely the concrete field practices associated with quality policies. The intention is to identify the explicit objectives of quality policies and to question beyond these good intentions, as well as analyse a number of processes, mechanisms and tendencies which give field actions a meaning different from that given to them by the actors. The objective is to highlight the pedagogical concerns of the field actors of quality assurance and at the same time, question a certain number of logics and arrangements in which these preoccupations are today invited to be interpreted and applied.
Keywords: Academic quality approach, collaboration, higher learning education, quality assurance.