University of Tartu has been accredited for seven years
The Quality Assessment Council for Higher Education of the Estonian Quality Agency for Education (HAKA) decided to accredit the University of Tartu for seven years.
The international expert panel that assessed the University of Tartu (UT) emphasized several strengths of the university. The panel found that UT plays an essential role in shaping the Estonian research landscape and that the university’s interest in dealing with important and potentially influential social issues deserves special recognition.
The Assessment Council highlighted the university’s contribution to supporting the development of teaching staff. For example, UT has recruited educational designers and organized seminars and training, which are highly valued by the teaching staff. UT also stands out for its strong principles of academic ethics. For example, the university has created the positions of good research advisors. This shows the university’s systematic and proactive activity in spreading the principles of good research among the UT membership.
The Council found that the university must pay even more attention to promoting quality culture in the future. For example, university members’ individual roles and responsibilities in promoting quality should be more clearly defined. UT should ensure that a value-based approach to quality culture is applied throughout the university.
The Rector of the University of Tartu, Toomas Asser, said that the seven-year accreditation was expected. Still, the university’s activities and development have a much longer perspective than seven years. “At the same time, we thoroughly prepared for the assessment. Thanks to self-analysis and the panel’s feedback, we got a good overview of our strengths and development opportunities. These will certainly be the basis for developing new action plans and a new development plan,” he said. “All in all, this confirms that we are on the right track.”
Experts offer a new perspective
The Rector added that the university is grateful to the panel for its thorough work. “The expert panel was present in Tartu for almost a whole week, also visited Narva college and delved into our activities,” he explained. “It is too early to say what exactly we will do based on the feedback we received. We plan to revive study mobility and pay attention to the development of study programmes. The topics on which we differed concern the trusting versus controlling quality culture, where we prefer the first, as well as the reconciliation of the goals of a national university and an international university, where the university does not see a contradiction.”
The director of HAKA, Heli Mattisen, stated that the primary added value of the panel consisting of experts from different countries is that it offers a new perspective to something self-evident for us. “Experts occasionally see what we have overlooked,” he said. “No matter how strange the position of foreign experts may seem, it is always smart to take it and make it work to your advantage. For example, foreign experts found that the University of Tartu should rethink its cautious position regarding cooperation within Estonia. The university could contribute to this more than before, considering the global competition and the relative smallness of Estonian universities in the world context.”
All higher education institutions in Estonia must undergo institutional accreditation at least once every seven years. Institutional accreditation is an external evaluation in which the compliance of the management, teaching, and research activities and the study and research environment of the higher education institution with legislation, the goals of the educational institution, and the development plan are assessed. An international expert panel carries out the assessment. The Quality Assessment Council makes an accreditation decision based on the panel’s report. The University of Tartu passed the institutional accreditation recently in 2015. Check out the assessment decisions and reports here.
Image: Andres Tennus / Tartu Ülikool