Complaints and appeals procedures for audits

Higher education institutions have the possibility to complain or appeal about FINEEC's evaluaton activities for higher education institutions in accordance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance
in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015). 

Complaint procedure

Higher education institutions have the possibility of making a complaint about FINEEC's higher education evaluation activities. The procedure follows the principles of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Higher education institutions can use the complaint procedure to express their dissatisfaction with the way the evaluation process was carried out or with the actions of the persons who carried out the evaluation, i.i. to give feedback on the evaluation activities. FINEEC has a separate appeals procedure for audits.

Principles of FINEEC's complaints procedure for evaluations of higher education institutions:

• The complaint must concern FINEEC's higher education evaluation process or the actions of the persons who conducted the evaluation.
• The complaint is made by a higher education institution. FINEEC does not process anonymous complaints.
• The complaint must be made within six months of the publication of the evaluation, audit, or accreditation it concerns.
• We will only process complaints that are within the scope of FINEEC's official duties.

We make every effort to process any complaints we receive within one month of the complaint having been sent to FINEEC. Once we have processed the complaint, we will get in touch with the contact person of the institution that made it. A complaint is initially processed by FINEEC’s Director or the Head of the Higher Education and Liberal Adult Education Unit, who decides if the response to the complaint should be drawn up by FINEEC's staff or if it should be submitted to the Higher Education Evaluation Committee or the Committee for Engineering Education. A written response is issued to a written complaint. The scope of the response depends on the scope of the issue to be considered. Our aim is to deal with complaints in a constructive and improvement-oriented manner.

The higher education institution can make a complaint using the form. 

Appeal procedure

An HEI audited or re-audited by FINEEC may request a review of the assessment outcome. The purpose of the procedure is to ensure the equal treatment of HEIs in the audits and to guarantee that the decision-making of the Higher Education Evaluation Committee is fair regarding the outcome of the audit.The procedure follows the jointly agreed European quality assurance principles for evaluation agencies.

The procedure will be applied to audits performed in accordance with the FINEEC Audit manual for HEIs  2019–2024.

The request may be targeted at the following audit results decided on by the Higher Education Evaluation Committee:

1) The higher education institution does not pass the audit, and a re-audit is required; or
2) The higher education institution does not pass the re-audit.

The request may be based on the grounds that the audit has not been performed in compliance with
the audit manual, and that the audit process, as performed, brings into question the fair and equal
treatment of higher education institutions.

The procedure is valid until the end of 2024.

FINEEC appeals procedure for quality audits 2019–2024

The Expert Team for appeals 2019–2024

• Quality Manager Tarja Hettula, National Defense University
• Rector (emerita) Anneli Pirttilä, Member of the Higher Education Evaluation Committee (2014–2018)
• Rector Pertti Puusaari, Häme University of Applied Sciences.

Personal deputy members:

• Senior Advisor Kari Seppälä, University of Turku (Hettula)
• Director Eva Maria Raudasoja, University of Oulu, Member of the Higher Education Evaluation Committee (2014–2018) (Pirttilä)
• Information technology expert Mikko Penttinen, Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Puusaari).