Designing Appropriate Model of Quality Audit for Higher Education of Iran

Over the past two decades, higher education has faced with the challenges and quality assurance is the first priority in management of higher education. Accordingly, several countries have increased efforts using various methods of evaluation and quality assurance to try for accreditation of input, process, output and audit of mechanisms, processes and structures in higher education. In this regard, accreditation processes (internal and external evaluation) have been conducted at universities of Iran but unfortunately nothing has been done about the audit. Therefore, this study is sought to use audit world Literature and consensus in the academic community of Iran to design quality audit model in the university system. The results show that quality management of teaching - learning, quality management of research, mission, goals& institutional management, quality management of interaction with society (social participation), quality management of human resources, quality management of support services, quality management of assessment and quality assurance system are in order of importance. So, the audit pattern has been designed in two dimensions of criteria and process. In addition, the recommendations of the action to effectively implement the audit in Iranian universities are provided.