THE ASSURANCE OF ACADEMIC QUALITY AND ITS RELATION WITH INSTITUTIONAL EVALUATION'S CULTURE

It is clear that the current environment is characterized by a time of changes and complexity. Social, cultural, educational and economic aspects, demands on performance skills in a society, the development of skills associated with employment opportunities, including the use of technologies in education, intercultural and internationalization phenomena, among other aspects, make a challenging environment for Higher Education Institutions in Mexico, where the issue of institutional evaluation has showed the need to work for the strengthened assurance of academic quality in recent years. One of the ways in which institutions demonstrate the academic quality assurance is the processes of institutional accreditation, however, several authors agree that these processes are done more as a way of reacting to the demands of the environment than as part of a continuous evaluation, namely, that universities do not show elements that guarantee nor the presence of a culture of institutional evaluation or permanent work for the assurance of academic quality and the fulfillment of its mission. So, this paper analyzes Higher Education Institutions' individual processes related to academic quality assurance, identifying some indicators that may reveal the existence of an institutional evaluation culture. The methodological experience, in a qualitative field, shows evidence that the mere existence of external efforts to improve institutional assessment processes and ensure the academic quality is not enough, since it is necessary that within the institutions, a true assessment culture be given, in which all the wealth of information, learning and experiences on evaluation processes hared by community members who will direct their efforts to impact in achieving educational plans and projects and in the quality academic assurance and the result of institutional accreditation.