Definição de bases estratégicas e de excelência para o desenvolvimento do ensino superior em Portugal

Abstract

A abordagem qualitativa, utilizada para aplicação e validação do modelo na unidade orgânica de uma universidade, permitiu avaliar até que ponto os potenciais utilizadores do modelo proposto são capazes de o compreender (as suas dimensões, o seu funcionamento, como interpretar os resultados-chave obtidos com a sua aplicação), bem como obter uma ideia preliminar acerca da utilidade do modelo enquanto ferramenta de suporte à melhoria contínua da qualidade das instituições de ensino superior Portuguesas. Os resultados obtidos com o estudo realizado permitem concluir que o modelo desenvolvido e testado pode ser aplicado pelas instituições de ensino superior Portuguesas como uma ferramenta de auto-avaliação e suporte aos seus esforços continuados de melhoria da qualidade.

Higher education institutions have always had an important role in society as centres for knowledge generation and diffusion. Nevertheless, they face, nowadays, several new multidimensional problems. The main goal of this work is to define strategic and excellence bases for the development of Portuguese higher education, that may contribute to its quality improvement, since this will inevitably lead to the improvement of the society and its citizens. The Portuguese higher education system is at present undergoing periodic assessments of its quality, namely regarding teaching and research activities. Nevertheless, there is no overall institutional assessment mechanism leading to a careful analysis of each institution as an organisational entity. Based upon an empirical study made with the goal of getting a better understanding of these institutions, in particular regarding strategic and quality management, innovation practices and tools being adopted, and on the study of several quality assessment models developed both for higher education institutions and business organisations, a self-assessment model was developed for the Portuguese higher education institutions, based upon nine criteria. Each one of the 9 criteria has been clearly defined, as well as the areas to address within each of them. The proposed model intends to provide a management and assessment tool supporting self-analysis (including the identification of strong points and areas for improvement), and providing simultaneously a source for quality improvement opportunities. In order to empirically validate the proposed model two different approaches were followed, a qualitative and a quantitative one, with the model applied in a set of Portuguese higher education institutions, in a particular university and in an organic unit of that same university. The quantitative approach allowed for the test and validation of the relationships between the different model criteria. The model’s underlying structure was validated through a questionnaire aimed at assessing how each Portuguese higher education institution (and the particular higher education institution considered) is dealing with a series of practices and factors considered to be critical for its quality improvement. In order to do this a detailed statistical analysis was performed over the data collected, through structural equation modelling (with PLS estimation techniques) to validate the proposed self-evaluation model structure and the relationships among its 9 underlying criteria. The qualitative approach, applied in the organic unit, has made possible to verify to what extent potential users would be able to understand the model (its dimension, how it works, how to interpret its key results), simultaneously getting a preliminary idea of its usefulness to drive improvement in the Portuguese higher education institutions. From the results obtained with this study it is possible to conclude that the model developed and tested can be applied successfully by higher education institutions, as a self-assessment tool to support their continuous quality improvement efforts.