UQAIB provides recommendations to first 14 applicants

KHDA's Higher Education Department has passed the Board's recommendations to the Licensing Department who have in turn communicated the Board's recommendations to the Universities.

Meanwhile KHDA's Higher Education Department has received a dozen new applications from Universities located in Dubai's free zones. The Board will be back in Dubai in the end of March to review the new applications. Recommendations for these 12 applicants will be available by the end of May.

UQAIB received these first set of 14 applications around November last year when KHDA's Higher Education Department held an informal stakeholder consultation session to discuss the quality assurance process. A dozen more applications have been received as Universities begin to see the benefit of this unique quality assurance model.

UQAIB's recommendations will be made public when applications from all the Higher Education Providers have been reviewed. KHDA has decided not to reveal part results as it would be inequitable treatment to the Higher Education Providers (HEPs) who applications are still under review.

Dr Warren Fox, Executive Director of Higher Education at KHDA comments:

"UQAIB's quality assurance process is unique in that it bases the quality on three main precincts. Firstly, the home HEP and its programs must be approved by the official higher education system of the home campus. Secondly, the standards used at the place-of-origin to achieve accreditation must be acceptable to Dubai and the international higher education community. Thirdly, there must be evidence that the quality of a HEP Branch and its programs are equivalent with its home HEP and programs. UQAIB will conduct as much external quality assurance as is necessary to independently determine that the HEPs own standards are acceptable. This Equivalency Validation Model is an innovative new process for ensuring quality in cross border higher education."

Focus on quality

Since April 2007 when KHDA was given charge of the entire education and human development continuum in the Emirate, ensuring quality has been the mainstay of all its programs. Last December, when KHDA began the critical responsibility of licensing educational institutes in the Emirate, KHDA's fundamental approach to its licensing responsibility was to introduce improved quality, access, reliability, and transparency. Keeping in line with this approach, KHDA resolved to form UQAIB to implement quality assurance in the Higher Education sector.

Who is UQAIB? What do they do?

UQAIB is the University Quality Assurance International Board, formed in March 2008, comprised of 11 international higher education quality assurance experts who have the primary goal of ensuring that the intended learning outcomes and quality of an academic program as offered by a Higher Education Provider's branch campuses in Dubai free zones are approximately the same as the intended learning outcomes and quality of that academic program as offered by the home campus.

The board will play an advisory role and provide KHDA with reputable, independent, and international input and guidance on the quality of higher education provided in Dubai Free Zones. They will provide quality-based recommendations to KHDA's Licensing Department who will in turn inform the HEP.

UQAIB's process aligns itself to DSP 2015 in that it provides a quality assurance process is in context with international quality assurance, but matches the human development model for Dubai.

Student interests protected

UQAIB's process places emphasis firstly on the University as having the primary responsibility for quality, and secondly on respect for the initial quality assurance system under which the university is established. But where ever necessary, UQAIB will undertake its own validation audits in lieu of, or in addition to, available external quality assurance reports. This ensures that students and other stakeholders (families, employers) in Dubai have their interests protected.