شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The ultimate goal of the paper is to assess the progress of quality assurance (QA) in higher education (HE) in Arab countries. This includes the establishment, structure and affiliation, accomplishment, future strategic plans, finance and role of the national QA agencies or commissions, or relevant ministerial departments. Thus, the national as well as regional trends and status of higher education quality assurance will be obtained and updated. The paper scans and reports the international trends in QA, most of the regional QA initiatives in the last decade, as well as the Arab countries’ national profiles. This assessment is an analytical and comparative literature and desk review-based study of the currently available national QA institutions and initiatives in all Arab countries that are members of the Arab League. Thus, this study depends heavily on the information available on websites, the published documentation provided by the individual national QA bodies, and any other published QA initiatives.There has been some promising progress in the field of QA in higher education in a very limited number of Arab countries with different levels, and the rest are obviously lagging behind. However, all of these efforts are not sufficient in the world of knowledge, competitiveness, rapid transformation and rising demand for enrolment. It is worth mentioning that few QA institutions have presentable, clear, interactive websites such as CAA in the UAE and AQAC in Palestine where information, lists of documents, procedures/guidelines, reports, accredited institutions of higher education and programs in two languages (Arabic and any other foreign language). It has been observed that all QA bodies use QA terminologies, such as accreditation and auditing, loosely and sometimes interchangeably. In conclusion, the paper points out that Arab countries have, to some extent, achieved a reasonable but insufficient level of QA promotion, and must urgently do much to promote a QA culture and enhancement within higher education institutions themselves, self and external institutional and program evaluation for both state as well as private universities. (Published Abstract)