A study into Georgian universities' approach to the national standards of quality for teaching and learning

This paper reports on a study conducted in Georgia on the issues of the university sector to implement new strategic principles and standards devised by the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE) for learning and teaching in higher education. This paper specifically considers the government’s institutional relations concerning the quality of teaching and learning. This is done by borrowing the conceptual framing of the governance relationship of Government and institution provided by Principle Agency (PA) theory. The paper presents the results of the survey and follow-up interviews and concludes that institutions differ in approach, embracing both symbolic compliance and professional pragmatism in regard to the accreditation requirements. A discussion follows, embracing a principle agency interpretation of what the results might mean in practical and policy terms for governance and the development of the sector. It is accepted that learning and teaching is a challenging space for nearly all universities across the world but the Georgia example highlights the dynamics of change within the context of a post-Soviet country and the emerging practical problems this legacy creates. The research identifies some of these tensions between national systems and institutional readiness. The paper closes by offering recommendations for improvement

Estimating the burden of antimicrobial resistance: a systematic literature review.

Background: Accurate estimates of the burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are needed to establish the magnitude of this global threat in terms of both health and cost, and to paramaterise cost-effectiveness evaluations of interventions aiming to tackle the problem. This review aimed to establish the alternative methodologies used in estimating AMR burden in order to appraise the current evidence base. Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, EconLit, PubMed and grey literature were searched. English language studies evaluating the impact of AMR (from any microbe) on patient, payer/provider and economic burden published between January 2013 and December 2015 were included. Independent screening of title/abstracts followed by full texts was performed using pre-specified criteria. A study quality score (from zero to one) was derived using Newcastle-Ottawa and Philips checklists. Extracted study data were used to compare study method and resulting burden estimate, according to perspective. Monetary costs were converted into 2013 USD. Results: Out of 5187 unique retrievals, 214 studies were included. One hundred eighty-seven studies estimated patient health, 75 studies estimated payer/provider and 11 studies estimated economic burden. 64% of included studies were single centre. The majority of studies estimating patient or provider/payer burden used regression techniques. 48% of studies estimating mortality burden found a significant impact from resistance, excess healthcare system costs ranged from non-significance to $1 billion per year, whilst economic burden ranged from$21,832 per case to over $3 trillion in GDP loss. Median quality scores (interquartile range) for patient, payer/provider and economic burden studies were 0.67 (0.56-0.67), 0.56 (0.46-0.67) and 0.53 (0.44-0.60) respectively. Conclusions: This study highlights what methodological assumptions and biases can occur dependent on chosen outcome and perspective. Currently, there is considerable variability in burden estimates, which can lead in-turn to inaccurate intervention evaluations and poor policy/investment decisions. Future research should utilise the recommendations presented in this review. Trial registration: This systematic review is registered with PROSPERO (PROSPERO CRD42016037510)

Quality assurance of higher education in the South Caucasus

This issue offers insights into how the south Caucasus countries of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia as different sovereign nations with their distinctive cultures and ideologies share a geo-political commonality of recent Soviet occupation with 20% of Georgia territory under occupation. They share a desire to develop, modernise and operate an effective higher education system which, through creativity, ingenuity and imagination supports their educational, cultural and economic ambitions. To that end they all joined the Bologna Process at the Bergen Ministerial Conference in 2005 and have undertaken reforms of their post-colonial futures, intended to improve the quality of higher education within their country and provide opportunities for students and academics’ mobility, improvement in teaching and learning régimes, the creation of quality assurance instruments that provide direction and focus to internal and external quality assessments and accreditation and have begun to focus on their research infrastructures. As members of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), each country has had to address its own higher education sector in order to formally comply with the agreement necessities, which critically required independent quality assurance bodies that had responsibility for programme or institutional accreditation. The consequences for each are different and details of how each has responded cannot be fully covered in this selection of papers in this special issue. What has been achieved, is a representation of responses that shine a light on the way the South Caucasus has answered the requirements for EHEA membership. It acts as a catalyst to discussion on the future direction of higher education in the region, including the furthering of large-scale alteration of national systems to include private institutions alongside nation-supported academies