Today at the Ministry of Education and Science of RA Minister Levon Mkrtchyan had a meeting with the ANQA director Ruben Topchyan and the vice-rectors of the universities with institutional accreditation.
The aim of the meeting was to present the jointly developed program on cluster audit.
Mr. Topchyan mentioned that as a result of discussions with the universities it was concluded that the number of academic programs is too large and accreditation of each academic program separately will be a big financial burden for the universities.
So, they offer first carry out cluster audit. As a result of the audit, the universities will get ready for program accreditation, and there will be a basis for comparison between universities with the same academic programs.
According to Mr. Topchyan, the cluster audit will promote professions enlargement and reduce accreditation costs.
According to the proposed program, the cluster audit will be compulsory for all universities. In each cluster, the expert panel will review 4 criteria: academic programs; teaching staff and resources; quality assurance; assessment, teaching and learning.
Minister of education Levon Mkrtchyan emphasized the importance of the activities aimed at higher education quality assurance and development of higher education system. He mentioned that during the discussions with the World Bank representative, he had offered to allocate next loan tranche to the higher education system.
Mr. Mkrtchyan offered to submit the jointly developed document to the ministry in written form. It will be discussed in the Rectors council and afterward, steps will be made towards implementation of the cluster audit. The minister also stressed the importance of the ANQA program which offers to determine a minimum threshold percent of program accreditation for the universities every year. He suggested the universities already start developing the roadmap of the program accreditation which will follow the cluster audit.