Integrating internal quality assurance at a time of transformation: University of the Free State, South Africa

Among the instruments used by the new democratic government of South Africa to address issues of equity and redress which were a legacy of the apartheid regime, external quality assurance was used to transform and integrate the higher education sector. Within this context, the University of the Free State (UFS) diversified its student body. It developed internal quality assurance (IQA) as a tool for internal transformation and quality enhancement to respond to tensions from this demographic change, as well as to deal with other imperatives from national policies. Conducted within the framework of an international research project implemented by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), this case study focuses on UFS’s efforts to make quality assurance and quality an integral component of the University’s core functions and to integrate IQA into its academic processes.