Design and evaluation of a quality assurance system in higher management education[Conception et évaluation d’un dispositif d’assurance qualité dans l’enseignement supérieur en gestion]

As a major tool used by academic institutions to drive their continuous improvement process, quality assurance is now a component of their entrepreneurial approach. The issue is crucial in the field of business education where accreditations are playing a strategic role. In France, it is a basis of the evaluation of private institutions and of the recognition of their programs and diplomas. Quality assurance has been applied to many aspects of higher education and it is now widely considered that assessment of learning outcomes should be part of the process. In this paper, we introduce a pedagogical framework that contributes to quality assurance through providing stakeholders with relevant information about students performance regarding a program's learning goals and program's heads with data to be used for continuous improvement. We describe an implementation of the framework in the context of fundamental courses in management and discuss the importance of grounding quality assurance in authoritative academic achievement standards.