FINEEC's self-assessment report for the ENQA targeted review 2026

Institutional quality audit compliance 

FINEEC publishes HEIs’ audit reports openly on its website, making them easily accessible to higher education institutions, stakeholders and other interested parties. The decision of the Higher Education Evaluation Committee on whether the institution passes the audit or is required to undergo a re-audit is presented in the summary, which forms part of the published audit report. 

The audit team drafts a report based on the data collected during the audit process. In the report, the audit team evaluates the HEI’s activities and their development in relation to the audit criteria and the gathered data, highlights strengths, and provides recommendations for improvement. The HEI may comment on any factual errors before the Higher Education Evaluation Committee’s decision meeting. In the fourth cycle, FINEEC will provide information to HEIs on any corrections made to the report. The final report is published on FINEEC’s website within three working days of the Evaluation Committee’s decision. 

If a HEI is required to undergo a re-audit, the report identifies the areas with essential development needs that are subject to re-audit. Similarly, if the audit team assesses Evaluation Area I or II as satisfactory, the HEI must report to the Higher Education Evaluation Committee on the development measures taken one year after the audit decision.

The outcome of the audit is communicated to the HEI immediately after the Higher Education Evaluation Committee’s decision-making meeting. In addition, FINEEC publishes a press release in three languages on its website, which is distributed to key media and shared on social media. Higher education institutions also often issue their own press releases on the results.

FINEEC has introduced a new reporting tool on its website, which will be used for all FINEEC reports including the fourth cycle audit reports. The audit platform designed for the third cycle will be discontinued. The previous platform was separate from the main FINEEC website and had some technical maintenance challenges. Another change is that the HEI self-assessment will no longer be included in the final audit report. This is partly due to the transition to the new reporting tool, but also due to experiences in the third cycle. While integrating the institution’s self-assessment with the audit team’s assessment worked well for the final report’s purpose, the online report’s length restrictions led to rather generic self-assessments which did not always serve the needs of the audit teams. HEIs are encouraged to publish their own self-assessments.

Reporting will be further discussed in Chapter 5.