Analysis of institutional evaluation reports of universities in Ankara which have participated in Institutional Evaluation Program of European University Association

This research is a descriptive study that analyses institutional evaluation reports of universities in Ankara that have participated in Institutional Evaluation Program of European University Association and the implementation process of the program in the universities.The research presents findings from institutional evaluation reports of Ankara, Gazi, Hazcettepe and Middle East Technical Universities in five dimensions namely governance, finance, research, education and stakeholders/international aspects and examines preparations and improvement activities carried out after the program.Data was collected from two different groups. The first group was academic staff of four universities employed at the largest (in terms of staff numbers) faculties in educational, natural, health and social sciences. Second group was a comparatively smaller one, which was composed of four administrative representatives who actively took part in institutional evaluation process. A questionnaire was implemented on the larger group of academic staff and the smaller group was interviewed using semi-structured interview form.The study researches views of academic staff on institutional evaluation, improvement recommendations on five different dimensions analysed in evaluation reports of universities and existence of any differences in academic staff?s views according to their universities, titles, disciplines and administrative experiences.Analyses of institutional evaluation reports demonstrated that the highly centralised constraints hinder the innovative and dynamic structure of universities. Reports emphasize that universities need to be more supportive of change and quality culture and that quality assurance has not yet been fully accepted; however self evalutaion studies are regarded as an important step in developing a quality culture and thus should be continued with participation from all related parties.Research results also show that academic staff did not participate sufficiently to institutional evaluation activities that although ensuring a comprehensive self-evaluation in universities, Institutional Evaluation Programme could not achieve deeply rooted changes and that academic staff highly agrees with the recommendations that are put forward in the reports. Moreover research findings show that there is a meaningful difference between academic staff?s views; in all dimensions according to their universities, in stakeholders/international aspects dimension according to their administrative experience, in research/education and stakeholders/international aspects dimensions according to their disciplines, and no meaningful difference in any of the dimensions according to their titles.