We want to be recognised internationally. QS Stars allows us to achieve this.
We spoke to CEIPA’s President, Dr. Diego Mauricio Mazo Cuervo about their experience using QS Stars. Out of a possible five stars, CEIPA achieved 4 stars.
1. What challenges or issues was your institution facing before engaging with QS Stars?
CEIPA faces significant issues like several higher education institutions worldwide. Among these issues are:
- How can our applicants perceive and realize in detail the quality of the institution before becoming a student
- How our students can permanently realize the quality of the institution where they study
- How our alumni can feel prouder of their institution and how they can be great ambassadors of the institution
- How to reduce student dropout and increase their permanence and successful graduation
- How to strengthen the Top of Mind of the CEIPA brand and improve the perception of quality, while the credibility and satisfaction increases in its community
- How to highlight the experience and quality of CEIPA’s online teaching, a commitment that has been in the institution for a little more than 20 years
- How to communicate in a more impactful manner the institution’s results and outcomes
Participating in this process allowed us to question and analyze our processes internally, evaluate the perceptions of our CEIPA community, and help identify a path to continue improving and overcoming these challenges.
2. What were the main reasons for your institution to conduct an audit with QS Stars?
CEIPA, within its strategic platform (long-term strategy for 2018-2030), has defined several strategic pillars that guide a clear route or path toward excellence as a university. These dimensions include sustainability, innovation, high quality, and leadership.
To advance in these pillars, CEIPA recognizes that its organizational culture must understand the importance of carrying out permanent self-evaluation and self-regulation processes that allow it to identify its strengths and, more importantly, its opportunities for improvement.
Making the above a reality implies recognizing the importance of identifying and diagnosing itself under high quality and rigorous standards at the national and international levels, which demonstrates to the general community CEIPA’s commitment to its higher purpose. Participation in QS Stars does not represent the end of a process, but rather the beginning of a path. QS Stars’ audit processes and orientations drive us to be a better institution every day with greater and more meaningful outcomes and results, and to contribute for a better society in every step we make.
3. Can you describe your experience with the QS Stars audit process and the steps your institution took to prepare for it?
CEIPA has participated in different high-quality processes at the national level, such as the achievement of High-Quality Accreditation of its Academic programs (84%) and High-Quality Institutional Accreditation, among many other quality processes in areas of sustainability and academic innovation, which have been of great relevance to learn and improve.
The QS Stars process is the first international-level audit in which the institution has participated. It has stood out to a high degree and exceptionally for different aspects that are worth highlighting. The directors, the auditors, and the QS Stars team stand out for their professionalism, their permanent and timely support, and especially the process and taking the necessary time to understand the particularities of our institution and be able to evaluate and audit the institution rigorously and comprehensively as required by the process. These aspects allowed us to feel permanent trust, close relationships, and high-quality support, which allowed professional, direct, and high-quality conversations between the corresponding teams.
Participating in the process required a deep understanding of the aspects to be evaluated. Self-diagnosing, identifying, and building the necessary and required evidence to present was a challenge, a new experience, and a great source of pride and reflection inside the institution. This process allowed us to identify and realize many institutional strengths. However, the most important thing is that it led us to reflect on aspects that were necessary to strengthen in terms of implementing new initiatives that allow us to have greater results while enhancing our documentation, data-collecting process, and accountability to our community.
Regarding preparation, it is worth highlighting the excellent process we experienced between CEIPA and QS Stars. First, at the beginning, participation in the QS Stars gave us some doubts and uncertainty because it was the first time we had participated in a process of this magnitude. However, the QS Stars team very kindly allowed CEIPA teams to have direct conversations to understand the scope and solve many doubts, which led us to decide to start the process with QS Stars.
In addition to the above, it was extremely important to carry out a knowledge transfer process with the entire CEIPA institution and talk about the commitment, the challenges, and what we were going to need from each member. This process was led by the institution’s directives to all teams at all levels and was paralleled with the leaders of different teams that we identified as key actors according to the dimensions to be evaluated in the QS Stars.
Before starting the process, the QS Stars guide was delivered to different teams so they could analyze the elements to be evaluated, perform a self-diagnosis, simulate potential results, and pre-identify the possible evidence we could provide for the process.
Once the process began, it was crucial to keep the different teams permanently informed of its progress.
4. How do you believe the QS Stars audit will benefit your institution strategically?
Our commitment as a higher education institution leads us to want to be recognized locally, nationally, and internationally as a leading university in educational innovation and high impact. To achieve this recognition is necessary to learn from the best universities, to compare ourselves, diagnose ourselves, and reinvent ourselves. Participating in the QS Stars audit allows us to achieve this through the support of an ally which helped us identify strong and weak aspects of the institution to be improved and benchmark our institution with high-quality institutions around the world.
Identifying key QS Stars performance indicators for the world’s universities allows us to articulate them through different improvement initiatives and within the institution’s own strategic objectives.
5. As an exemplary institution with 4 Stars in your region, what is your advice for getting the most out of QS Stars?
There are different tips that we consider relevant:
- Recognize that participating in QS Stars marks a beginning on a permanent path towards excellence. This path came with joy and pride when identifying strengths in each of the universities, but also with a lot of commitment when identifying aspects in which it is necessary to improve.
- Recognize that these processes will bring with them much learning, and participating in them helps the institution not to get out of our comfort zone but to expand our comfort zone by learning new things and implementing new improvement initiatives.
- Recognize that regardless of the particularities of each university, the institution will be diagnosed and audited under international criteria that apply to any university anywhere in the world.
- Dedicate sufficient time and resources necessary for the teams to consciously construct and record each of the requested evidence in as much detail as possible
- Recognize that this process will be successful and satisfactory if the directives and the different teams are committed.
6. How has being rated the highest in Employability, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Good Governance, Social Impact, and Online Learning helped your institution be further recognized in these areas?
Having obtained such good results in these areas is a source of great pride for the institution and should be a source of pride for its general community of students, alumni, and professors, among others.
Many universities worldwide make big bets to be better every day, to leave their mark on society through the comprehensive and ideal education of their community in general, and to impact society positively. The areas QS Stars audited are aligned with different challenges in society and the business world in which universities are responsible for achieving a positive impact.
On the one hand, obtaining outstanding results in employability demonstrates the institution’s commitment to offering relevant education and generating high-quality learning outcomes in its community. High results in indicators related to working in the short term, especially in their areas of training, and students and alumni betting on and starting with their own entrepreneurship demonstrate their graduates’ impact.
Working for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion is a source of pride for the institution, and it constantly makes great efforts to ensure that individuals are better informed, more aware, and act as global citizens with responsibility and character for these issues.
Virtual education is a pioneering commitment by CEIPA in the country, which has been in the institution for around 20 years, being the first higher education institution to offer a virtual program. For this reason, CEIPA today has 100% of its programs in both modalities, in-person and virtual, since, from its conviction, it wants to bet on access to quality education through virtuality.
Faced with the social impact, CEIPA recognizes that this dimension is one of the main reasons why higher education institutions exist. Universities are the growth engines for society development, especially in emerging or developing EMDES countries. For this reason, it is part of CEIPA’s conviction that its education, research, extension, and internationalization process in a triad such as the university-company-state articulation must have a positive impact and offer knowledge or solutions to societal challenges.
Last but not least, the results in the good governance area are of utmost relevance for the institution since change and orientation must materialize from the top with excellent leadership, clear policies, and leading by example. This assessment affirms the importance of comprehensive coherence between the higher purpose of CEIPA and its daily work, between the values of the institution and how its collaborators and other communities reflect these as great ambassadors, how the stakes transcend the aspiration to become reality, and how these bets must be accompanied by clear regulatory frameworks that guide them.