Following up on duties of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) as a supervisor of a number of higher education institutions, UMY conducted an internship program for 6 of 32 higher education institutions on Tuesday (17/7) at A.R. Fachruddin A of UMY. The six institutions were Universitas Respati Yogyakarta (UNRIYO), Institut Teknologi Yogyakarta (ITY), Universitas Muhammadyah Kendari (UMKendari), Sekolah Tinggi Kesehatan Mandalaya Waliya Kendari, Akademi Keperawatan PPNI Kendari, and Universitas Sulawesi Tenggara (UnSultra). The internship program provides a monitoring and evaluation technique to enhance quality of the higher education. Another material was dealing with documenting and managing information owned by the institutions.

Head of Internal Quality Assurance of UMY Anna Nur Nazilah Chamim, S.T., M.Eng. stated that the data were managed based on regulations by Ministry of Education and Culture. “According to Permendikbud No.5/2014 on Higher Education Quality Assurance Systems, a higher education institution should manage data and integrate them into a database. UMY has applied it and we have two kinds of data for quality documentation, hard files, and soft files,” told Anna.

“The hard files are paper documentation arranged and gathered from each department. We label them to be easily found and saved in a shelf. The data will be beneficial when there is an accreditation visit since assessors usually check document completeness,” explained Anna.

She also maintained that the soft files are a backup and a database. “The soft file management needs to involve an information technology team so that there is an integrated database. However, for the beginning, we can use Ms. Excel so that higher education institutions can be responsible for data they have. For instance, a lecturer publishes a paper on a journal. When an assessor asks us to show it, we can show on what journal and when the paper is published,” declared Anna.

Meanwhile, Coordinator of Kopertis V Yogyakarta Dr. Ir. Bambang Supriyadi, CES., DEA informed that the program does not aim to enhance accreditation. “However the main aim is to improve quality assurance processes and efforts to manage a higher education institution. When the process is developed, the accreditation score will increase,” asserted Bambang in an interview.

Bambang also conveyed that the program assisted Kopertis to supervise institutions which have not reached standards. “Kopertis may only supervise areas of Kopertis. The program absolutely can cover wider areas,” he said.