Some concepts and terms about quality in higher education:

• Quality: means accuracy and mastery through commitment to applying standard standards in performance.
• Evaluation: The process of measuring the quality of performance in all activities with the aim of continuously improving future performance.
• Evaluation: A set of procedures and methods taken based on evaluation results, ensuring the implementation of recognized standards to achieve target quality levels in educational institutions.
• Quality Assurance: Ensure that mechanisms and procedures are implemented in a timely and appropriate manner to ensure that the target quality is achieved, regardless of how the quality standards are determined.
• Procedures: A set of rules necessary to carry out work or a set of written instructions that describe agreed-upon steps for completing a particular task or series of tasks.
• Mechanisms: A set of rules necessary to carry out work.
• Documentation: Recording and recording all work data in the organization, so that the organization can develop a history of the reference or mechanisms through which it can analyze this recorded data for the purpose of development and improvement.
• Audit: A structured process of obtaining objective evidence and proof related to verifying activities and practices and their compliance with objective standards, with the aim of communicating its results to the parties using this information.
• Internal auditor: A person from the organization, with experience in the field of specialization, who evaluates the extent to which quality standards are met in the organization or program.
• External auditor: A person from outside the institution, with experience in the field of specialization, who is invited by the center to review the status of the institution or program under audit, according to the institution’s self-study and internal audit.
• Facilitator: A member of the organization who facilitates the external audit process during field visits, preferably the program coordinator or the director of the organization’s quality office.
• Accreditation: The set of procedures and processes carried out by the center in order to ensure that the institution has achieved the approved quality and guarantee conditions and specifications, and that its programs comply with the approved and announced standards.
• Institutional accreditation: Ensuring that the institution has the capacity and capabilities to implement its approved mission and objectives, in accordance with specific standards and axes regarding the adequacy of facilities and resources. This includes the institution’s staff, the provision of academic and student support services, curricula, and achievement levels for students, faculty members, and other components of the educational institution. It is an essential document for the institution in its relations with students, professors, the labor market and the local community.
• Program accreditation: Evaluating programs at an institution that has obtained institutional accreditation, to ensure the quality of these programs and the extent to which they meet the requirements of the granted certificate in accordance with the announced standards and controls, and recognizing that their educational program has achieved or reached at least the minimum standards of adequacy and quality previously set by the center.
• Performance evaluation: The process by which the performance of an organization or program is subjected to quantitative and qualitative judgment and evaluation, based on approved objectives through the use of reference standards that help understand and comprehend the relationship between the various elements of the evaluation.
• Indicators: A set of quantitative and qualitative measures used to track performance over time, to infer the extent to which it meets agreed performance levels, and they are screening points that monitor progress towards achieving standards.
• Evidence and proof: Available sources and evidence that can be used to determine assessment measures, which include databases, meeting minutes, annual reports, evaluation results, and various records such as attendance and absence records, interviews…..etc.
• Standard: The specifications necessary for acceptable education to ensure its quality, increase its effectiveness, and increase its competitiveness. It is a reference scale that can be used as a guide when evaluating university performance by comparing it with the desired standard levels.
• Standards: The foundations laid by the Center for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Educational Institutions. They represent the minimum standards that an institution must meet in the educational programs it implements.
• Approved standards: The foundations determined by the institution for its own sake, and approved by the Center for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Educational Institutions, provided that they are not less than the level of standard standards.
• Performance: A measure of the work accomplished by an organization or program.
• Quality review: One of the functions or tasks of senior management to carry out regular evaluations, with the aim of ensuring the accuracy, effectiveness, adequacy and proportionality of quality management systems in accordance with quality objectives that respond to the needs of change and the aspirations of beneficiaries, and the review also includes identifying the need to take action. The audit report is used, among other sources of information, to review the quality system.
• The Foundation’s Vision: The aspiration and ambition for what the Foundation’s future state should be like. The vision has the broadest meanings and is a statement in which the Foundation expresses its vision for the future in the form of perceptions, orientations, ambitions, and how it wants to see its position and the groups it serves in the future.
• The organization’s mission: A description of the ways in which the organization reaches its vision and achieves its goals. The mission is also a statement that explains the reason for establishing the organization, the tasks assigned to it, and the services it provides.