The Role of the Quality Assurance in Russian Higher Education Policy
Keywords:
korkeakoulutuksen reformi, korkeakoulupolitiikka, laadunvarmistusjärjestelmät, laadunarviointiAbstract
Education is no longer the domain of states, but an increasing number of national and international actors, organizations and the private sector have increased their influence on education policy (such as the OECD, World Bank and EU). This has coincided with a global turn of education policy debate towards creating indicators to examine and assess different education systems. Quality has become a defining feature of higher education policy globally. The change of academic culture achieved by means of bureaucracy and management may be referred to as quality revolution. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the field of quality assurance of higher education in Russia. This article examines steering programmatic guidelines of education policy with the aim at analyzing whether quality revolution appears at Russian higher education reforms. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the field of education in Russia has undergone significant changes, such as increase in the numbers of universities and students, appearance of private universities and the commitment towards international education reforms and standards (such as the Bologna Process). During the 2000s, the higher education reforms in Russia have culminated in creating
common standards for the diversified education sector by developing assessment and quality
assurance systems.
