Abstract:

The paper proposes the review of the main benchmarking criteria, based on the quality indicators used by the higher education institutions and presents the possible development methodologies to obtain new indicators of referencem as a result of the inter-universities cooperation. Once these indicators are defined, a national database would be created and through benchmarking methods, there could be established the level of national performance of the educational system. The paper aims at demonstrating the necessity of an unitary evaluation system of the academic quality because of the existing of at least three parallel indicators systems in this field, each of these focusing only on some aspects and some different elements of the academic
quality. Going forward and generalizing the process, we could compare the national educational
system with the European one, using the benchmarking approach. The final purpose is that of
establishing a „quality culture” for the Romanian higher education system.