Three Strategic Elements at Internal Quality Assurance System in Higher Education Institutions

This article presents three strategic elements at Internal Quality Assurance System in Higher Education Institutions.For the above, a questionnaire was designed in order to apply six semi-structured interviews to directors of Internal Quality Assurance Systems in universities with high-quality accreditation.It was inquired these directors about three relevant categories or strategic elements: mission, strategic decisions, and decision-making methodologies.The relevance of addressing these three categories is based on the fact that purposes of higher education institutions differ from business or for-profit organizations.Therefore, an Internal Quality Assurance System, which is part of a higher education institution, has also a different logic than for-profit organizations.As a result, this study presents an analysis of the informants' opinions regarding the mission, strategic decisions, and methodologies for making strategic decisions in Internal Quality Assurance Systems in higher education institutions, which are considered critical strategic elements for designing or redesigning these systems.It was found that the mission of the IQAS in universities is "to ensure the achievement of the institutional mission".Three relevant strategic decisions at IQAS are "having an integrated information system that support self-evaluation processes, integrating the information requirements of accreditation agency with requirements of ISO 9001 standards from ICONTEC", "the leadership and support of quality assurance processes by the institution's high-level hierarchy", and "align institutional self-evaluation processes with the universitys strategic planning processes".Regarding the use of any model or methodology for strategic decision-making in the IQAS, the use of the accreditation model designed by the accreditation agency of a country, as well as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) were two common methodologies.