The QUALITAS project, which started under the auspices of CEENQA member ARACIS in Romania was the first instance where CEENQA peers from all member agencies were called upon to become a part of international review teams evaluating Romanian Higher Education Institutions; we envisaged this exciting exercise to jumpstart the long standing idea of an international data base of CEENQA experts which could be used for similar exercises in other CEENQA member constitutions and beyond in the future.
The general objective of the QUALITAS project was quality assurance in the higher education system
in Romania, by developing an organisational culture focused on continuous improvement of quality
in higher education institutions, creating managerial skills at institutional and system level, which are
fundamental prerequisites for improving the quality of study programmes and their relevance for the
integration on the labour market and for a knowledge-based society.
The project was structured around five work packages, under which all the intended objectives were
achieved and a number of publications were developed, which are available on the ARACIS web page
related to the QUALITAS project: http://www.aracis.ro/proiecte/qualitas/.
Actions were implemented in 2020 to continue and strengthen the results of the projects and ensure
sustainability; some of the measures taken to this purpose are:
- continued publication of the Quality Assurance Review for Higher Education (Revista pentru
Asigurarea Calității în Învățământul Superior) – two issues published in 2020 (to be released in
2021), namely: vol. 10, no. 1 and 2, December 2020, on “Participation of a wide range of
stakeholders in quality assurance in higher education”; - organising of three online training sessions for expert evaluators in the ARACIS National Register
of Evaluators and representatives of higher education institutions; - continued collaboration with international expert evaluators selected within the QUALITAS
project for the institutional evaluations carried out by ARACIS, etc.