Rethinking about continuous quality assessment in Iran higher education: Need for strengthening national evaluation agencies and framework revision

Success of national institutions of quality assessment (NIQA) and accreditation of quality depends on the external quality assurance (EQA) processes. In spite of the fact, it is more than two decades that continuous quality assessment started in higher education in Iran. Nevertheless, the external in higher education quality assessment (non-medical), has not been done in an organized way yet. At the national level, three institutions have been established to act as national quality assurance agency (QAA):1) comprehensive higher education, 2) medical education, and 3) engineering education. The QAA in medical education has been active in conducting EQA. However, the other two NIQA have not yet been able to carry out EQA and therefore not eligible for being recognized as an accredited QAA agency.  Based on the above, a research project was conducted to find out the actual and desired states of the NIQA in Iran. In doing so, three research questions were framed and answered in the research project. This article reports the findings of the research project. The results indicated that the National Institution of Quality Assessment of general medical education has been successful. However, there is room for improvement of the other two NIQA. In this regard, factors which are affecting such situation are analyzed and towards improving the conditions of these two NIQA, a set of measures are proposed.