Laurea UAS has passed the audit

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) has conducted an audit of Laurea university of applied sciences and has awarded it a quality label that is valid for six years from 26 August 2016. The quality system of Laurea fulfils the criteria for the quality management of higher education institutions and corresponds to the European principles and recommendations.

– Laurea has a very vivid and dialogue-based quality culture, says Sakari Kainulainen, chair of the audit team from Diaconia UAS.

According to the audit team, Laurea UAS has succeeded in combining a comprehensive and systematic quality management with inclusive and communal atmosphere. The rationale and objectives of the quality policy of Laurea University of Applied Sciences are clearly defined and accessible to all staff members and students, as well as external stakeholders. Laurea has developed an especially functional way to interpret strategic focus areas into concrete goals and activities covering everyone from top management to individual teachers.

A number of recommendations for development were also provided by the audit team. A systematic review of student feedback processes is required. This would include the assessing the capturing, collecting, documenting, analysis and usage of student feedback and also other main sources of data on quality of activities. Laurea should concentrate on gathering the type of data which benefits it the most and perhaps introduce periodicity to feedback surveys.

The audit team recommends that Laurea takes stronger ownership in the development of its own quality system as a whole and assess which parts of the quality system perform best and where further efforts are still needed. Audits of quality systems of higher education institutions began in Finland in 2005. The audit report is available on FINEEC’s webpage at https://karvi.fi/en/publication/

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