title: Measuring and comparing higher education quality between countries worldwide.
abstract: The purpose of this investigation is to establish a unidimensional interval scale for measuring each country on the quality of higher education, based on indicators (items) characterizing various aspects of a country's quality. The data from these indicators are publicly available through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for all countries worldwide. Currently, a country's quality of higher education is summarized by simple descriptive statistics of these many indicators, and there seems to be a need to combine these results into a single measure of quality. A single measure of quality can facilitate a country's education quality to be monitored over time, enable a comparison of education quality between different countries, and help decision making relative to improving a country's quality of education. The results show that, with the Rasch partial credit model, it is possible to represent each country's quality of higher education by a single measure. Possible implications and extensions of this new scale are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Slaviansk-on-Kuban State Pedagogical Institute, Krasnodar Territory, Russia. anatoliy_maslak@mail.ru
authors.forename: Anatoli A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Maslak
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Karabatsos
authors.forename: Tatijana S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Anisimova
authors.forename: Sergei A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Osipov
mesh_terms: D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D014495:Universities