Welcome to the Institutional Audits Directorate

The Institutional Audits Directorate of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) is responsible for giving effect to the core function of auditing the effectiveness of the arrangements for managing the quality of:

• teaching and learning
• research
• community engagement

in all public providers and qualifying private providers of higher education.

The HEQC supports the principle that the primary responsibility for the quality of provision rests with higher education institutions themselves. The role of the HEQC is thus to provide external validation of the claims made by a higher education institution in its self-evaluation report submitted as part of its audit portfolio. This portfolio is the basis of the institutional quality audit. An external panel of peers and experts carries out a site visit during which they gather information which they compare with that contained in the self-evaluation report. Using the HEQC Audit Criteria (reference: Criteria for Institutional Audits), the panel then prepares an audit report based on their assessment of the effectiveness of the institutional quality management systems.

All public and qualifying private higher education institutions are audited once within a six-year audit cycle which started in 2004.

The HEQC's Institutional Audits Committee, constituted by the HEQC Board, is responsible for sanctioning the release of the draft audit report to the institution for comment, with all audit reports being submitted to the Board for final approval. The audit report is thus a report of the HEQC to the institution. An executive summary of each audit report is placed on the CHE website.

Full details of the audit process, including guidelines for institutional preparations and guidelines for auditors, are contained in the Institutional Audits Manual (reference: HEQC Institutional Audits Manual 2007).

View institutions audited, audit panels and executive summaries of the audit reports.

As part of the HEQC's ongoing research into the impact of Institutional Audits, an evaluative study was conducted in 2006 (reference: HEQC Evaluative Study of Institutional Audits 2006).