Excellence in Internal Quality Assurance: An Empirical Study in United States

Abstract

Assessment or internal quality assurance (IQA) processes have often been driven by external stakeholders such as accreditation and governmental agencies of higher education, which are focused on accountability rather than quality improvement. This research examined how private and non-profit Doctoral and Research institutions with less public financial dependence and accountability requirements adopted the Excellence in Assessment (EIA) rubric to improve their IQA models that supports improvement. A survey based on National Institute of Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) EIA rubric was sent to the ASSESS Listserv to learn if there was a difference in EIA scores related to source of funding and Carnegie characteristics. A two-way MANOVA analysis of the survey responses showed that there was no difference in IQA practice followed EIA rubric between source of funding (public and non-profit private institutions) and Carnegie classification (Research and Comprehensive). Recommendations are made regarding the reliability of the EIA rubric. The EIA designation can serve as a framework for U.S. and non-U.S. higher education institutions to benchmark and improve the current IQA processes.

Keywords

• Internal quality assurance (IQA)
• transparency
• accountability
• source of funding
• Carnegie classification
• quality improvement