Self-Evaluations and Visiting Committees: Effects of Quality Assessment in Dutch Higher Education. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of assessment practices of educational quality at universities in the Netherlands. The project involved analysis of questionnaire responses from 239 study programs at all 13 Netherlands universities followed by 12 case studies. The paper first provides a brief account of the theoretical background of the research project, identifying hypotheses expected to explain the degree of effectiveness of the quality assessment procedures. The study concluded that: (1) quality management in teaching has received much more attention in recent years; (2) larger amounts of resources based on assessment findings are being employed to foster improvement based on assessment findings; and (3) the Dutch quality management system has been receiving a high level of approval within the institutions. The study's efforts to explain differences in assessment utilization from the perspectives of contingency theory and political economics perspective were not successful. (Contains 26 references.) (GLR)