Quality Assurance in Higher Education: Risk Management

Should there be one Risk Management Committee to identify all the risks and opportunities?

While working as assistant coordinator of our department's quality assurance committee, I finished the internal auditor course (ISO 9001:2015) with SGS Oman. In 2018, I then made a research comparing the processes in ISO 9001:2015 with the audit being conducted by the Oman Academic Accreditation Authority (OAAA). One of the findings of the study revealed that our university/college has a distinct and separate Risk Management Committee/Unit for each of the departments. These committees are tasked on identifying the risks and opportunities of each department. However,  ISO 9001:2015 has adopted the "risk-based thinking" and "risk assessment is a main component of the process at each level of the system." 

The study then recommended that each process in the department in the university/college identify its own risks and opportunities. For example, the "Exam Committee" identify its own risks and the other committees also identify their own risks. Risk-based thinking requires companies to evaluate risk when establishing processes. As such, one committee should not identify all the risks and opportunities in a department.

(I presented the results of this research at the Smart Education and Technology Symposium (SETS) 2018, held at Ibra College of Technology, Ibra, Oman, on March 27, 2018.)