EXPLORING ROLE OF MANAGEMENT IN QUALITY ASSURANCE AT PRIVATE AND STATE UNIVERSITIES OF GEORGIA

Today Georgia as never before faces challenges of quality assurance. Despite reforms carried out by the Georgian government aiming at the quality improvement of higher education, many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of the country still faces real problems. The concept of “management” is not so widely known, not to say anything about the lack of human resources with theoretical knowledge and experience in education management. The purpose of the research was to analyze universities management in general terms and identify how quality-oriented universities' management is in Georgia. For this purpose quantitative research was carried out. The universities were selected according to their legal status, period of functionality and qualitative experience. By combining certain data we elaborated indicators for the purpose of comparing various aspects of universities. For ensuring validity criteria validity was applied. Results of the research show that management is the main pre-requisite for quality assurance. Drawbacks and gaps in university management have also been identified the improvement of which will make a basis for enhancing management quality and establish a management culture at the Universities of Georgia.