Internal Quality Assurance Practices in Czech Public Higher Education

The environment in which higher education institutions (HEIs) are operating has dramatically changed. Wider access to HE and new ways of government funding, has put pressure on accountability of HEIs. Increased competition and international mobility of students and staff has raised expectations about quality. As a result, delivering a high quality service has become an important strategic goal for the many HEIs, so they are forced to introduce internal mechanisms to manage quality. In order to effectively manage quality, it is important to be able to accurately measure it. Therefore, this article aims to examine which quality assurance practices (quality measurement and management instruments) are employed by Czech public HEIs. The findings suggest that Czech public HEIs employ a great variety of instruments to measure quality. But in order to effectively compete with domestic private HEIs, as well as internationally on the European HE market, they should be more proactive in employing quality management practices.