Best practices for quality assurance require clearly defined, transparent and fair criteria and standards that serve as references for evaluations and reports of programmes offered by higher education providers.
MQA has developed a code of practice on criteria and standards for higher education in Malaysia. This code of practice is benchmarked against international good practices and nationally accepted by stakeholders through various consultations.
The code provides a guideline of general requirements in the following areas:
Vision, mission and learning outcomes;
Curriculum design and delivery;
Student selection and support services;
Assessment of students;
Academic staff;
Educational resources;
Programme monitoring and review;
Leadership, governance and administration; and
Continual quality improvement.
In general, MQA quality assures programmes through two distinct processes:
Provisional Accreditation - is an exercise to determine whether a programme has met the minimum quality requirements preliminary to Full Accreditation.
Full Accreditation - is an assessment exercise to ascertain that the teaching, learning and all other related activities of a programme provided by a higher education provider has met the quality standards and in compliance with the MQF.
The MQA Act 2007 also provides for the conferment of a self accrediting status to mature higher education institutions that have well established internal quality assurance mechanisms. To be so conferred, the higher education institution needs to undergo an institutional audit, and if successful, all qualifications it offers will be automatically registered in the MQR.
The processes above are further supported by continuous monitoring to ensure the programmes offered by the institutions are always quality assured.