Education Agency Reveals Unqualified Instructors
The Higher Education Quality Agency identified a lack of instructors and lacking instructor competence as the biggest problems in eight higher education institutions.
In a two-year assessment of the country's 33 existing higher education institutions, 25 met national standards, but those that didn't sometimes had severe deficiencies.
Bachelor's and master's programs had a more equal level of quality overall, but experts discovered problems, sometimes severe, in doctoral and applied higher education programs, reported ERR radio.
In many cases, instructors weren't qualified to teach and hadn't earned the academic qualifications required by their job. In one instance, a professor did not actually have a Ph.D.
“One problem is that instructors may not themselves even be competent enough to do research on an international level and have their work published by a recognized research journal. Another problem is that an instructor's own research may not be related to a postgraduare student's topic. They may not be qualified to provide instruction on that particular topic," said Heli Mattisen, who heads the Higher Education Quality Agency.
Assessing around 250 curricula, 18 were rejected, resulting in the closure of two private colleges this coming January.
Earlier this year, two other colleges, the Euro Academy and the Evangelical Lutheran Church Institute of Theology, were stripped of their right to award academic degrees and downgraded into institutions of professional education as their postgraduate curricula did not pass the assessment.
The Higher Education Quality Agency's evaluation, conducted by 160 experts and concluded last month, is part of Estonia's adoption of a new accreditation system.
Ott Tammik