Quality assurance in Sudanese higher education : current status and challenges ahead

Abstract EN

Like many higher education systems in developing countries, the higher education sector in Sudan is currently experiencing substantial challenges of enrolment expansion, brain drain among the academic staff, reduction in public funding, increased competition among higher education institutions and the increasing stakeholders’ concentration on performance and accountability.

Considerable efforts have been made over the past few years to develop an effective national framework for quality assurance.

Part of these efforts resulted in the establishment of the Evaluation and Accreditation Commission in 2003 as a specialized authority to create and encourage a culture of quality assurance and accreditation within all Sudanese universities, and to check out that the universities are accountable and effective in delivering academic programs and services.

The main goal of this article is to look at the current status of quality assurance practices and to identify challenges facing Sudanese universities as they endeavor to ensure quality of their activities and outputs.

Based on detailed reviewing of quality dimensions coupled with some descriptive and inferential statistical methods, the study indicates that there is a quality gap between intended and actual quality assurance practices.

Practical implications and recommendations for improved quality assurance practices at Sudanese universities are provided.

The main conclusion of this article is that it is timely for policy makers of higher education in Sudan to question what has gone wrong and what has been forgotten in an attempt to put it right in their future policy priorities