Quality Assurance (QA)

The Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR, site) oversees the national quality evaluation system for universities and research bodies. It is responsible for the quality assessment of the activities carried out by universities and research institutes, recipients of public funding. It is also entrusted with steering the Independent Evaluation Units’ activities, and with assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of public funding programmes or incentive programmes for research and innovation activities. Since 20 June 2019, ANVUR is a member of ENQA for the next 5 years.

The Higher Education Quality Assurance system has been introduced in Italy by Law n. 240/2010 and Legislative Decree n.19/2012. Following this legislation, ANVUR has developed its own assessment criteria, methodologies and procedures to fulfill its tasks, in strict adherence to Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG).
The Italian Higher Education Quality Assurance system is called AVA (Autovalutazione, Valutazione periodica, Accreditamento – Self-assessment, Periodic Evaluation, Accreditation) and is operational since 2013. The major aims of AVA are:

• To assure that the higher education institutions operating in Italy uniformly provide an appropriate quality of their services;
• To support the exercise by the Universities of responsible and reliable autonomy in the use of public resources and in collective and individual behavior related to education, research and knowledge and technological transfer activities;
• To improve the quality of education and research.
  AVA sets standards for the self-assessment by programmes and institutions, concerning their internal procedures and the outcomes of their activities, and for the external assessment of the quality assurance systems. External evaluation is based on peer review, is carried out by experts appointed by ANVUR through on-site visits and document analysis. It addresses Accreditation of new Universities and programmes, Periodic accreditation of Universities and their programmes.

As expected in AVA, in the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the Quality Assurance (QA) key actors are the following:

• the Nucleo di Valutazione (Independent Evaluation Unit – NdV) site, mail: ndv at uniroma2.it,
• the Presidio di Qualità (Unit responsible for the internal QA system – PQA), mail: pqa at uniroma2.it,
• the Commissioni paritetiche docenti-studenti (Joint Teaching-Student Committees – CPDS).

The university is organized in Faculty or Macroarea: in each of these structures there is a Teaching Manager, who collaborates with the Presidium and the General Administration for QA procedures. In turn, Faculties and Macroareas are structured in Departments: each department defines a QA referent for training, research and third mission activities.

Scheme of the Athenaeum’s QA organization [Scheme]
YUFE [site]
University of Rome Tor Vergata [site]