The Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development

International Cooperation

Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development was established in 2005 as a non-state organization following the agreement between the Russian Federation Council of University Rectors and business community. AQA is striving for facilitating the competitive capacity of higher education institutions, securing their sustainable activities and position on the education market, refining organizational and management techniques, raising revenues and solving their chartered tasks. AQA provides support to higher education institutions in carrying out self-evaluation and self-research as to the correspondence of their educational activities with state requirements, international benchmarks and standards for quality evaluation, or recommended guidelines of world-recognized educational agencies. AQA supports higher education institutions in developing new long-term development trends, in high-tech supported organization of educational activities and intra-institutional management for providing technological and organizational quality assurance in education.

Bearing in mind the on-going process of globalization, the main goal of the Agency is to create stable cooperation models with leading international accreditation agencies and networks for quality assurance and at the same time assure the concordance of Agency’s major activities and standards with leading international quality assurance guidelines. All policies of the Agency have been designed according to recommendations and codes of good practice of such organizations as INQAAHE, ENQA, EUA, APQN and EFQUEL. In terms of education across borders the Agency is being guided by the state educational standards, recommendations of UNESCO and EUA. Feeling a sustainable demand for international expertise on behalf of many Russian higher education institutions, the Agency has negotiated with several renowned international experts in the sphere of education and included them in the review teems. Since over the last decade the market of online programs is growing rapidly in Russia, we are working on creating appropriate standards addressing higher education institutions which implement e-learning programs. Together with the European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) the Agency is taking part in the project European University Quality in eLearning (UNIQUe) which is supported by the European Commission.

AQA representatives take active participation in QA events worldwide:

-Tenth ENQA General Assembly, (September 2008, Vienna, Austria)

-APQN Conference and Annual General Meeting “Emerging Challenges, Emerging Practices: Sharing a Global Vision of Quality Assurance in Higher Education” (February 2008, Tokyo, Japan)

2nd European Quality Assurance Forum “Implementing and Using Quality Assurance: Strategy and Practice”, (November 2007, Rome, Italy)

-“European Union e-learning conference”, (July 2006, Helsinki, Finland)

“ENQA Workshop on the Language of European Quality Assurance”, (June 2006, Warwick, UK)

-“E-learning Africa”, (May 2006, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

-Asia-Pacific Quality Network Conference and Annual General Meeting “Regional Mobility: Cooperation in Quality Assurance”, (March 2006, Shanghai, China)

-European Foundation for Quality in E-learning Forum "Networks, Structures, Opportunities in European E-Learning Quality", (November 2006, Berlin, Germany)

-Magna Charta Universitatum Conference “Managing University Autonomy: The Institutional Balancing of Teaching and Research”, (September 2005, Bologna, Italy)

The Agency takes an active part in international projects. One of the projects we are currently working on within Tempus call is a project "“Spreading QF and modeling a didactical offer reform in RF”. The project has the following overall objective: To spread the elaboration of a framework of comparable and compatible qualifications for the RF HE system. To renew the in-depth debate on some requirements of the Bologna process, so that the academic positions and the decision makers could enhance acquaintance with the European discussions and experiences on QF and could improve the interaction process with the economic interlocutors. To contribute to the current RF HE system reforms more into line with Europe.

Specific role of the AQA, according to the contents of the application, will be performing, together with the other consortium members, the set of activities planned by the application with specific reference to the following actions:

-To assess and to monitor, by "ex ante", "in itinere" and "ex post" procedures, the retraining sessions attended by the academic and managerial staff of the participant Russian Universities.

-To assess the draft of the new Didactical Regulation Charters to be adopted by the participant Russian Universities.

-To participate to the set of seminars to establish a permanent feedback with the participant Russian Universities on local needs.

-To disseminate and ensure project sustainability with other representatives of labour market and economic interlocutors.

International Partners

International networks

ENQA - The European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education was established in 2000 to promote European co-operation in the field of quality assurance. In November 2004 the General Assembly transformed the Network into the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).  Read more

INQAAHE - The International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) is a world-wide association of some 200 organizations active in the theory and practice of quality assurance in higher education. The great majority of its members are quality assurance agencies that operate in many different ways, although the Network also welcomes (as associate or institution members) other organizations that have an interest in QA in HE. Read more

APQN - The Asia-Pacific Quality Network (APQN) has been developed with the purpose of serving the needs of quality assurance agencies in higher education in a region that contains over half the world’s population. APQN is already helping to build alliances between agencies, and assisting countries/territories that do not have a quality assurance agency of their own. Read more

EFQUEL - The European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) is a membership organisation which is based in Brussels, Belgium. It is a European network with over 70 member organisations such as other networks, universities, corporations and national agencies. The Foundation serves as sustainable and proactive network and provides valuable services to the European eLearning community. The Foundation's initiators are the European Institut for eLearning, the European Schoolnet, FIM Newlearning, the MENON Network, the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany and the University of Reading/UK. The foundation has taken its first steps in the framework of the Triangle project. EFQUEL will provide support, transparency, open participation and leadership for a broad range of topics. The purpose of the foundation is to involve actors in a European community of users and experts to share experiences on how eLearning can be used to strengthen individual, organisational, local and regional development, digital and learning literacy, and promote social cohesion. Read more

Foreign Agencies:

FIBAA - International Agency for the Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Programs and Higher Education Institutions. The FIBAA (Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation) is a Swiss non-profit agency for quality assurance with operative branches in Bonn (Germany) and Zurich (Switzerland). FIBAA audits, assesses and furthers private and state-approved higher education institutions and thus enhances transparency in the educational sector.  Read more