Quality Enhancement Work

SKH – a state university

SKH is a state university and public authority. This means that SKH is subject to both the laws that govern public organisations and the laws and regulations that govern universities in Sweden.

As a university, we must, among other things, maintain a high quality of education and research. Quality enhancement work is also, pursuant to the Higher Education Act, the joint concern of both staff and students.

The activities of universities are continuously scrutinised by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) on behalf of the government. Among other things, UKÄ scrutinises the quality of the universities’ educational programmes, as well as the universities’ own systems for quality assurance. UKÄ also monitors universities’ compliance with laws and rules.

What do the terms mean?

• Quality enhancement work means what we do to both develop quality and ensure that our activities maintain high quality. We arrive at systematic quality enhancement work by having clear procedures and processes. We also perform various forms of monitoring and evaluation so as to understand what students and doctoral students think about their education. By working through the different phases of the enhancement wheel (plan – implement – follow up – adjust – feedback), we obtain a system.
• When we speak about the quality system, we mean the more formal framework within which quality enhancement work is performed. This includes how we are organised, the distribution of quality enhancement responsibilities between different functions, our internal governing and support documents, processes and procedures and how we identify goals, processes and resources for achieving our objectives.

Through quality enhancement work:

• our activities are developed towards SKH’s goals and visions in accordance with the strategic plan,
• we ensure that SKH’s activities are performed in accordance with current laws, ordinances and regulations, as well as SKH’s own governing and support documents,
• we can identify strengths and areas for development in our activities,
• we can take action on the areas for development with the aim of developing our activities.

If you have any questions, contact quality coordinator Lovisa af Petersens (lovisa.afpetersens@uniarts.se).