Institutional Accreditation & Compliance Manager
Listing reference: manco_000284
Listing status: Online
Apply by: 10 October 2023
Position summary
Industry: Education & Training
Job category: Education and Training
Location: Durban
Contract: Fixed Term Contract
EE position: Yes
Introduction
Management College of Southern Africa (MANCOSA), a DHET registered and CHE accredited private higher education distance education provider, offering undergraduate and postgraduate business qualifications, has the following vacancy available: Institutional Accreditation & Compliance Manager
Job description
Job Purpose
The successful appointee will be responsible for delivering on important accreditation and quality assurance projects, including but not limited to:
Compliance and regulatory tasks
Accreditation
- Provide leadership on national reviews, accreditation and compliance requirements by ensuring the institutions policies, systems and procedures are effective and fall within the accreditation and regulatory requirements.
- Lead teams, provide clear expectations and handle the needs of the staff members who work under the Accreditation & Compliance Manager.
- Create mechanism to promote and continuously improve core academic functions.
- Manage and maintain registration and accreditation status in SADC regions.
- Manage registration and accreditation of higher education partnership institutions.
- Review and submit the HEQC accreditation applications and the SAQA and DHET applications in accordance with the criteria specified by each regulatory body.
- Oversee the work of the Accreditation and Compliance unit and manage tasks and activities in terms of accreditation, reaccreditation, site visits, institutional research and programme review and development.
- Successfully manage and coordinate conditions responses, representations, improvement plans.
- Evaluate and upload approved HEQC reaccreditation applications for the DHET reregistration cycles and overseeing the process by which the programmes were reviewed.
- Manage the collating, compiling and submitting institutional accreditation applications for regions.
- Manage institutional preparations for site visits and institutional audits.
- Assess and improve accreditation processes in areas of responsibility.
Compliance
- Provide leadership on the implementation of all regulatory requirements and in doing so conduct an annual internal institutional regulatory compliance review.
- Ensure the completion of all reporting requirements and submission of the DHET Annual Report in adherence to the guidelines provided by the DHET.
- Manage the verification of SAQA records and overseeing NLRD uploads to the HEQCIS according to the standardised template issued.
- Develop and maintain an auditing programme around compliance for the institution.·
- Identify and assess potential compliance-related risk areas and a compliance and risk mitigation programme around all related compliance activities to detect, prevent, and resolve issues.
- Maintain a schedule of all compliance related activities across the institution and follow-up on completion of these activities across all departments.
- Develop policies and procedures for the institution on compliance.
- Collect and maintain compliance data.
- Lead the planning, coordination and facilitation of successful Site Visits
- Attend appropriate meetings, conferences or workshops held by regulatory bodies and provide feedback.
Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) and Institutional Audits Framework (IAF)
- Provide leadership, guidance and oversight of quality promotion and capacity development, institutional audits, standards development, national reviews, programme accreditation and re-accreditation as well as institutional adaption and change management aligned to QAF and Framework for Institutional Audits
- Conduct gap analyses in context of the QAF and Institution Audit Framework
- Ensure that the implementation of the Continuous Improvement Plan and align the improvements to the QAF and IAF.
- Ensure that successful audits are conducted on the implementation of improvements that was identified in the continuous improvement plan.
- Design, the development and implementation of the digital Quality Assurance Management System (QAMS).
- Workshop stakeholders, review and implement improvements to the QAMS.
Capacity Building
- Develop a strong team to enable the accreditation and compliance deliver on its mandate.
- Restructure teams and workloads in accordance with operational and academic requirements.
- Identify training and development opportunities for Monitoring and Evaluation team and implement succession plans.
- Identify critical skills essential for the quality service delivery of accreditation & compliance unit and take the responsibility for further development of relevant and essential skills to improve team’s performance.
- Implement compliance workshops across the institution, inclusive of a regional roadshow
Stakeholder Relationship
- Build and sustain relationships with key external regulatory bodies.
- Facilitate internal and external stakeholders’ to:
o develop detailed project plans related to the institutional audit / site visit
o review and edit compliance & quality assurance documentation
o provide expert in put for the institutional the digital Quality Assurance Management System (QAMS)
o provide expert in put in logistics planning as well as execution of the audit / site visit itself.
Qualification development
- Project manage the process of new qualification development and submission to accreditation authorities including responding to conditions where required
- Quality assure the curricula of qualifications developed for accreditation to ensure that programme accreditation criteria meet all HEQSF requirements.
- Review, propose amendments and participate in governance and programme approval committees.
- Ensure compliance with relevant professional bodies in context of design and accreditation of programmes where required.
- Ensure payments to are signed off for submission of programme to CHE.
Programme review and audits
- Monitor review and audits of programmes.
- Ensure these reviews follow established processes and are taken through the appropriate governance structures
Special projects
- Manage and coordinate relevant ad hoc projects such as research projects, and quality improvement projects across the institution.
Minimum requirements
Qualifications
- Minimum Master’s Degree or equivalent.
Experience
- Minimum of five years of progressively increasing responsibility working directly in a quality assurance or accreditation role, in a higher education institution with a focus on academic quality.
- Ability to conduct institutional research to collect, analyze, and report on data and benchmark against regulatory standards and industry best practices.
- Direct knowledge of, or experience with, regional/national and programmatic accreditation preferred.
- Meticulously edit documents possessing a high level of attention to detail is required.
- Manage complex and highly sensitive materials and to foster a culture of confidentiality.
- Strong work ethic with the ability to excel in a demanding, outcome-oriented, and dynamic environment with little supervision
- Creativity and the ability to envision and achieve a positive
Competencies
- Impeccable English verbal and written skills.
- Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the South African Higher Education landscape.
- High level of computer literacy.
- Strong project planning, monitoring, and evaluation skills
- Critical thinking and ability to assess, interpret and mitigate against risk
- Demonstrated ability to manage self and subordinates
- Analytical skills exercised effectively in context of implementing solutions and creating opportunities
- Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
- Change management and effective stakeholder engagement capability
- Demonstrate and operate high levels of integrity
