Implementation of quality Assurance Standards in Zimbabwean context of Higher Education: What are the challenges?

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue VI, June 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Implementation of quality Assurance Standards in Zimbabwean context of Higher Education: What are the challenges?

GN Shava, M Sithole, H Moyo, N Mupezeni
National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe

Abstract
Higher and tertiary education is essential for economic and political development of a country and is vital to competitiveness in an increasing globalizing knowledge society. Quality Assurance (QA) in higher education is a wide subject and during the last decade, it has been given great attention. Since the implementation of the Bologna process in 1999, QA in higher education has been one of the main concerns. Quality culture has become a widespread concept in Zimbabwean higher education context of QA for the past years. In Zimbabwe and perhaps the entire African region, structured national QA processes in higher education are a very recent phenomenon and where these structures have been established, institutions face major capacity constraints. The purpose of this study is to explore the challenges of implementing QA in the Zimbabwean context of higher education. The study reports on the experiences of academics in implementing QA in two universities in Zimbabwe. From the study, it was shown that there concerns about the quality of higher education in Zimbabwe are on the rise and the major challenges where highlighted.

Key words: Higher education: quality assurance: teaching and learning, universities: Zimbabwe.

Introduction

The growing importance of human capital to the economic and social development of contemporary societies mandated the massification of higher education and subsequently (Albatch, 2013b) motivated a search for new methods of ensuring and improving academic standards. The combined impact of globalization and massification in higher education (Henkel, 2000) have radically altered the traditional relationships between state and institutions of higher learning and motivated policy makers to seek new ways and means for ensuring academic quality in higher education (World Bank 2002). At the close of the twentieth century, policy frameworks for higher education institutions underwent substantial reforms with many countries shifting from elite to mass education systems (Trow, 2005) and this has prompted the need for quality assurance mechanisms.

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