The Agency for Control and Quality Assurance of Higher Education was established by the Government of Montenegro on November 2, 2017. It contributes to the quality improvement of higher education in Montenegro by application of European Standards and Guidelines in the evaluation of higher education institutions, their study programs, and lifelong study programs in order to ensure the integration of Montenegrin system of quality assurance of higher education into the EHEA. In this sense, the vision of the Agency is the creation of a credible, internationally recognizable, and competitive higher education system in Montenegro as the basis for its essential integration into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and economic and social improvement of Montenegro. The primary objective of the Agency is the quality improvement of higher education institutions in Montenegro and their study programs and the guarantee of meeting the primary standards and criteria for their public validity. The Agency meets this objective through external evaluation (accreditation of study programs, lifelong learning programs, and reaccreditation of higher education institutions) and the institutions do it through internal quality assurance.
The Agency’s responsibility is to implement Standard and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) in process of external evaluation and self-assessment; to conduct study programme accreditation procedure and issue a certificate on accreditation of the study programmes (Bachelor, Master, PhD, Distance learning, English); to conduct reaccreditation of higher education institutions and issue a certificate on reaccreditation; to conduct a periodic assessment of quality of licensed higher education institutions’ work, following the request of an authorized body of institution or the Ministry; to establish the list of experts for accreditation of study programmes, or reaccreditation of institutions based on a public call; to cooperate with higher education institutions with regard to matters of quality assurance and quality improvement; to analyse self-evaluation and external evaluation reports of institutions; to propose measures for quality improvement of higher education based on recommendations put forward in re-accreditation reports of higher education institutions and present them to the Ministry and the Government; and to keep a register of accredited study programmes and reaccredited institutions; to cooperate with European institutions in field of HE; to implement research and analysis; to propose measures to Government for improvement of HE system. Since its establishment, the Agency for Control and Quality Assurance of Higher Education has accredited one doctoral study program in English and is in the process of accrediting another study program of basic studies in English.
Participation in this project will be of multiple benefits for the Agency, both from the perspective of sharing and receiving knowledge in this area, as well as from the aspect of improving the standards and the application procedures related to this type of program and monitoring the implementation of accreditation procedures for such programs. ACQAHE is in charge of WP4 (policy improvements). It will exploit the results of analytical work from WP2 and knowledge from the study visits and co-creation workshop to develop new standards for evaluation of study programmes in English and to create an information system for electronic submission of accreditation requests as well as for their evaluation. It would ensure higher quality of the evaluation process and therefore of the programmes and a higher visibility of available programmes through a main central digital register of accredited programmes with programme details. All this has not been digitalised up to now. The Agency will work closely with the Ministry of Education on the amendments of the Law on Higher Education which needs to remove barriers related to foreign students. The Agency staff is also versatile in research and analytical work and they will contribute to WP2 and WP3 as well given the information from the evaluations which they handle. This partner will also engage in communication and exploitation activities.