The Quality of Business Education in the Kingdom of Bahrain

The Directorate of Higher Education Reviews (DHR) is part of the Education and Training Quality Authority (BQA) that was officially established in the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2008. Its primary objective is to enhance the quality of higher education in the Kingdom by conducting reviews into the quality assurance arrangements of higher education institutions (HEIs) and identifying areas in need of improvement. Reviews are carried out using four indicators each of which has a number of sub-indicators. The Review Reports, developed as a result of the reviews, contain judgements about whether or not each of the programmes meets the requirements of each indicator as well as make recommendations for the enhancement of the programmes.

Purpose:

This paper presents a ranking of the HEIs based on their performance in the business programme reviews conducted by DHR, foremost, by looking into the number of programmes which have received satisfactory judgement; secondly, by analyzing the HEIs’ performance in terms of review judgments (‘Confidence’, ‘Limited Confidence’, or ‘No Confidence’) vis-a-vis the number of registered and affected students, the number of programme offerings, as well as the four quality indicators.

Design:

The study is basically a descriptive type of research offering a qualitative discussion on the findings. The data used have been based on DHR Programmes-within-College Reviews Reports, which have been published in the BQA website starting 2012. In analyzing the performance of the HEIs, and for purposes of interpreting data, each HEI has been allotted one (1) point for every programme with ‘Confidence’ judgment; half point (.5) for every programme with ‘Limited Confidence’ judgment; and no point (0) for each programme which got ‘No Confidence’ judgment.

A total of 36 DHR Review Reports have been included in this study which are available online via http://www.bqa.gov.bh/En/Reports/UniReports/Pages/default.aspx. 

Findings:

There are generally four major findings in this study, to wit:

1. The quality of business education in the Kingdom of Bahrain is generally “above average†as revealed in the programme reviews conducted by DHR between 2012 and 2016.
2. Majority of the business students in the Kingdom of Bahrain are registered in a general Management programme (39%) while the least appealing business disciplines are MIS and Economics, each with only 4% of the total number of registered students.
3. Notwithstanding the overall performance of the HEIs, at least two HEIs MUST review their business education provision in light of the DHR review reports and in consideration of their “below average†performance in the programme reviews.
4. The two indicators of programme quality which the concerned HEIs need to seriously consider are Academic Standards of the Graduates (Indicator 2) and Effectiveness of Quality Management & Assurance (Indicator 4).

Limitations of the Study:

There were 14 HEIs operating in the Kingdom of Bahrain during the period covered in this study. This paper, however, included only 10 of which because three of these institutions had shut down before completing the second cycle of programme reviews, while one university (QRS University) does not offer business-related programmes. XYZ University and YZA University had undergone Cycle 1 programme reviews, but both HEIs had decided to cease operation before the introduction of Programmes-within-College Reviews (Cycle 2) in 2009; as such both have been excluded in this study. XYZ University stopped its operation in 2008, while YZA voluntarily shut down the following year. Moreover, KLM University, has been likewise excluded  because it ceased operation in 2013 when its license was revoked by the Higher Education Council following a closure order by a court in the Kingdom.

Value of the Study

The value of this study is anchored on the main objectives of programme reviews as detailed in the DHR’s Programmes-within-College Reviews Handbook (2014), which are: (1) to provide decision-makers, including employers,  with evidence-based judgements on the quality of learning programmes; (2) to support the development of internal quality assurance processes with information on emerging good practices and challenges, evaluative comments and continuing improvement; and (3) to enhance the reputation of Bahrain’s higher education regionally and internationally (DHR Programmes-within College Reviews Handbook, 2014).