A Study On The Quality Assurance System Of Higher Education In Uganda

Since the 1980s, the growing demands of society, economy and technology have propelled higher education to cover a broader social community. Along with the swift expansion of higher education's scale and structure, higher education quality has become a key spotlight during the process of development and reform in higher education in all countries in the world. Facing globalization, the higher education system of Africa is achieving significant advances by leaps and bounds, but also experiencing the layered crises. "Declaration and Action Plan on Higher Education in Africa" suggests that African countries have to set up national higher education quality assurance system to develop internal quality evaluation mechanism which is suitable to each higher education institution in this region.Relatively speaking, Uganda is one of the countries which possess the burgeoning and remarkable higher education system in East Africa. The quality assurance system of higher education in Uganda has developed in its rough history for nearly one century. It has completed the transformation gradually from the self-regulation model to the state-control model, and then to the cooperation pattern. At present, Uganda has already formed an open quality assurance system of higher education with multi-side participation and cooperation initially. This system is composed of three important components:the national level, the higher education institutional level and the East Africa regional level.Based on literature analysis, historical analysis and case analysis, this paper tries to make a research in a deep-going way from the national level, higher education institutional level and East Africa regional level of higher education quality assurance in Uganda. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a whole exhibition of the forming reasons, practical processes and functions of quality assurance system of higher education in Uganda, and to analyze its experiences and lessons.This paper consists of six parts. The first part brings the topic up, makes a brief analysis on relevant literature both at home and abroad, defines the main concepts, and introduces the purposes, contents and methods of this study. The second part overviews the general situation of Uganda's higher education and the forming reasons of its quality assurance system. The third part analyzes the operation of higher education quality assurance system at Uganda national level. The fourth part introduces the practice of internal quality assurance at institutional level, and reveals a case analysis of Makerere University. The fifth part elaborates the quality assurance cooperation at East Africa regional level. The sixth part summarizes and reflects the experiences and lessons of the quality assurance system of higher education in Uganda, and put forward author's own humble opinion on that basis.