Quality assurance (QA) in education is the maintenance of the desired level of quality standard and practices in the education system by means of providing attention to every stage of the different processes in the institution.
Nowadays the establishment of quality assurance system in higher education is a global concern. There is a growing demand for QA mechanism at national, regional and global levels due to the increasing number of higher education institutions (HEI) and diversity of emerging study programs in tertiary education.
In Bangladesh, the scope of higher education is expanding rapidly in both the public and private sectors. The government, UGC and the universities consider a rising need to concentrate on the quality and standard of higher education. UGC is responding positively to the challenges regarding global competence and is committed to change the higher education landscape by establishing Institutional Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) at the University Level.
Northern University Bangladesh (NUB), an esteemed university of Bangladesh, has the strong commitment to quality and established its own IQAC. General objectives of IQAC, NUB is to establish a QA culture at NUB that can ensure the practice of continuously improving culture, demonstrate accountability and enhancement and thus, can satisfy the stakeholders. The quality assurance areas covered by IQAC are governance, curriculum content design and review, student admission, progress and achievements, physical facilities, teaching-learning and assessment, student support services, staff and facilities, research and extension, process management and continuous improvement. To assess the prevailing quality of standards in the different program offering entities self-assessment (SA) is performed under the supervision of IQAC, NUB.