The Ministry of Education and Higher Education will launch a quality control and accreditation programme for all the universities in the country, a top official told Gulf Times Wednesday.
“At the ministry, we are working hard to ensure that the regulations of quality are fulfilled by all universities in Qatar. The process is expected to be launched mostly, by the end of this year,” disclosed, Dr Khalid al-Ali, acting undersecretary for higher education affairs.
“Now, we have good expansion of universities in the private sector as several new universities are setting up their branches in Qatar. We have taken additional effort to make sure that quality is ensured in all the institutes,” explained Dr al-Ali.
The official also revealed that a new private university, Lusial University, is coming up sometime next year. “It is a local private university under the Lusail Educational Institute. They will provide some programmes in Arabic and English. In addition, an Indian University is supposed to start operations later this year,” he noted.
“We have a lot of applications and we revise them and approve those which meet our standards. We make sure that the specialties offered by the universities are not overlapped and each institute gets an equal share of some of the specialties,” he continued.
As for the accreditation process, he said the department is working on the modalities of the implementation of the programme.
“There are two proposals. One is to form a team at the ministry for the necessary inspections at the universities. Another one is to outsource it to agencies in the US and the UK. We have already approached them to find out the feasibility of the idea as well as other details,” pointed out, Dr al-Ali.
He noted that whatever the universities have ensured on paper, shall be implemented in all aspects and based on the implementation of the quality aspects, the ministry shall consider them for scholarships.
According to the official, each institute will do self-assessment and send it to the ministry.
“The accreditation team can revise these appraisals and examine them. We look at every aspect and ensure that every area of quality is taken care of. Accordingly, the institute is accredited,” he maintained.
“Our team will assess the reports from the universities and they will set certain standards and make sure that every university meets these standards. There is a particular law for this and once the law is approved, we will launch the programme sometime this year, mostly towards the end of this year,” added Dr al-Ali.
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