UGM adopts education quality assurance system

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

In a bid to assure the public of the high quality of its education, Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University (UGM) has recently declared that it has fully and thoroughly implemented the so-termed Quality Assurance System for Higher Education (SPMPT).

"Quality assurance has become a world trend. It is part of our public accountability. People demand accountability from universities because they are managed and run with public money," said Toni Atyanto Dharoko, UGM assistant to the senior vice rector overseeing educational operations and quality control, in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post.

Providing quality assurance for a university, Toni says, is a form of moral obligation to the public who need to be certain that the university is providing education of a consistently high standard.

"Without quality assurance, a university will fail because people will just leave it behind," said Toni. He added that from a legal point of view, Article 51 of Law No 20/2003 on the national education system clearly mentions quality assurance as one of the elements of educational evaluation.

Similarly, the Higher Education Long-Term Strategy (HELTS) for2003 to 2010 requires that all Indonesian universities apply quality assurance systems.

The Higher Education National Accreditation Body (BAN-PT) is also expected to apply a new accreditation system for tertiary education institutions. Accreditation will no longer be awarded to a study program, but instead, to the university as a whole.

"Therefore, quality assurance will be an important element to be considered before the accreditation body declares a university to be accredited," Toni said.

UGM started preparing its quality assurance system in 2001 when it became a permanent member of the ASEAN University Network for Quality Assurance (UAN-QA), an institution under the ASEAN Secretariat. The university established its Quality Assurance Office in the same year.

By 2003, the quality assurance infrastructures had been set up, including documentation, organizational structures, and procedures for quality assurance for each school, department and study program.

"We also conducted workshops on internal academic quality audits; we currently have some 106 certified internal academic quality auditors," UGM rector Sofian Effendi said after declaring the implementation of the quality assurance system on Oct. 11.

The declaration essentially acknowledges that quality higher education is the right of every student and that every UGM lecturer is committed to providing high quality teaching.

Yet, said Toni, the official declaration did not mean that UGM had never thought about quality and quality improvement before.

Previously, quality matters had not been formulated systematically, were not well documented, and were poorly implemented.

"What we are doing now is perfecting what was already there and making it more systematic, better documented, and better managed for the sake of transparency," Toni said.

In principle, said Toni, UGM's quality assurance system was a systematic effort at a continuous quality improvement in the university, manifest in the form of a cycle of quality assurance activities.

Each cycle comprises seven components, namely standards, implementation, monitoring, self-evaluation, internal audit, corrective procedures, and quality improvement.

Each time a cycle is completed, another cycle begins, but always with an improved, newly determined standard.

"So, hopefully, there will always be improvement, even if only small, every time a cycle is completed," said Toni, adding the Quality Assurance Office in this case was tasked with evaluating all the quality assurance activities of a cycle whose result would then be used to improve the next cycle.

Toni said that after the quality assurance system had run for a year, UGM would have useful empirical experience that it could use to further improve the next cycle.

A Total Quality Culture System (TQCS) would endure that by the year 2006, quality assurance would become routine, a part of the culture and an accepted system.

"By that time the quality assurance system will no longer be just a project, but something routine instead," he said, adding that the period 2001 through 2006 was the first phase of the university's medium-term quality assurance program.