La evaluación y el cambio institucional en la sociedad del conocimiento : un estudio de caso en la Universidad del Valle - Colombia

Contemporary societies face the challenge of incorporating and adapting themselves to a transformation process aimed at the construction of knowledge societies. Such process is especially oriented by Institutions of Higher Education, which are seen as a privileged space where the future of a society is forged through knowledge and as such, they face the new social, economic, and political challenges affecting the world. Thus, the search for quality education becomes a continuous improvement process which brings about the interest in educational evaluation in the university milieu.   This research study deals with the evaluation of higher education as part of the current debate concerning the changes and challenges triggered by institutional evaluation, an awareness-raising process based on the quality culture. As an strategy, self-evaluation allows institutions for higher education to carry out holistic assessment processes aimed at detecting weaknesses in those institutions requiring improvement. Therefore, the outcome of this serves as basis for the design and implementation of an improvement plan, not only for each institution but also for each study program.  Stufflebeam’s (1987) CIPP systemic model was used to holistically analyze the implementation of self-evaluation, considering variables such as context, planning, process, and product.  The objectives of the study were: 1. Find out how the second self-evaluation process of the Public Accounting and Business Administration study programs of the Administrative Sciences Faculty of Universidad del Valle, aimed at obtaining high-quality reaccreditation from the Ministry of National Education of Colombia, was carried out; 2. Implement the Improvement Plan for such study programs; and 3. Analyze and interpret the changes arising from this self-evaluation, by using the Neo-institutional Theory.  The methodology evolved  around a case study of two study programs. A mixed approach was chosen, where the qualitative stage of semi-structured interviews was complemented by the quantitative stage of  surveys. The data also included institutional documents dealing with information about the two study programs and about the Faculty.  The findings show that both study programs followed right procedures and carried out correct actions in order to fit the Universidad del Valle Institutional Model by making the necessary adjustments to meet their needs and pertinence, which led to the successful implementation of the self-evaluation process.   Likewise, it was found that the factors with the best improvement rate were Academic Processes, Teaching Stuff, Organization, Administration and Management, Human Resources, Infrastructure, and Financial Resources. Contrary to this, the factors with the lowest improvement rate were Alumni and Institutional Welfare. We conclude that following a sound institutional framework provides study programs with an identity and support and, at the same time, it allows them to implement follow-up improvement plans that bring about significant changes resulting in the rooting of the quality culture and innovation of the academic community.  These findings can shed light into a better understanding of the implementation of self-evaluation and that of improvement plans. In addition, they can be instrumental in recognizing the importance of facilitating factors as well as constraining factors that may hamper evaluation processes and the generation of changes within the study programs. Thus, this research study can be seen as a reflection guide on a subject which has been scarcely dealt with. It is also important as it exposes the role played by institutional frameworks and the internal and external pressures exerted on administrative staff members involved in decision-making processes at institutions of higher education.  All in all, it can be said that quality, evaluation, change, and innovation are inherent concepts to the organizational learning perspective and to the mobility or knowledge transfer.

Keyphrases: Knowledge society, Quality, Self-evaluation, Institutional change, Institution of  higher education, Study programs, Improvement plan, Institutional pressure, Agency, Decision-making