Konstantinos Giziakis
The Department of Maritime Studies, Scientific Advisor of Careers Office, University of Piraeus, Greece
Chrysa Agapitou
Department of Business Administration, University of Piraeus, Greece
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Published in: 10th QMOD Conference. Quality Management and Organiqatinal Development. Our Dreams of Excellence; 18-20 June; 2007 in Helsingborg; Sweden
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 26:110, p.
Published: 2008-02-15
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
There is a general consensus that institutions of Higher Education are responsible for ensuring that appropriate standards are being achieved and a good quality education is being offered. Hence; processes for self-assessment; monitoring and evaluation are to be constructed; that take into account the special nature of the particular organization or service. We must have in mind that quality is measured for a number of reasons (Watt; 1998) such as political – to justify the service; funding; measure client progress; strategic planning etc. The Careers Office of the University of Piraeus founded in 1997. It tries to bridge the gap between Higher Education and the business world and therefore; supports students and graduates to develop skills that will assist them to follow appropriate pathways to career and education. To this end it has set up very recently the Entrepreneurship Service that is funded by the Social Fund of the European Union along with Greek national resources and contributes to the effort of supporting and promoting youth entrepreneurship.
The purpose of this paper is to present the content of quality in Higher Education through the case of the University of Piraeus Careers Office- Entrepreneurship Service. It offers creative and critical attributes for describing the ways that quality and excellence can be developed in the process of the evaluation of services offered in Greek higher education. The sole reason for evaluating the service is to assess implementation of planned objectives regarding clients’ progress and satisfaction. To this end a systems framework is presented along with its implementation in order to achieve and measure the quantity and quality of the Entrepreneurship Service offered by the above institution. Hence; it points out the strengths and weaknesses of the Service and the opportunities for further improvement.
