On Value-Added Assessment in Higher Education

Abstract

Value-added assessment, as first appeared in the “Coleman Report”, is an assessment model that takes the extent of students’ progress and growth as the standard, and reflects a “student-centered” quality concept. Value means consistence, correspondence, and proximateness between the existence, attributes and changes of the object on the one hand and the dimensions of the subject on the other hand. From the perspective of the object of higher education services, value-added in higher education is represented by value-added in the serving products of public services - students; from the perspective of the producers of the serving products of higher education, it is represented by the improvement of the systematic functioning of higher education institutions; and from the users of the serving products of higher education, it is represented by the increase of the satisfaction of government, society and family towards higher education. The value-added assessment is directed at the starting point, process and results of higher education, its functions are diagnosis, improvement and supervision, and its footholds are improvement of quality and promotion of fairness.