This research peper intends to develop an instrument that can support the National Council of Higher Education Quality Assessment in Mozambique (CNAQ) in its process of evaluation and accreditation of institutions of Higher Education (HE) in Mozambique, using scientific arguments that support quality of education assessment based on the perception of students.

HE Statistics (Premugy, 2012) show that there is a high percentage of degree courses' teachers who besides not having a psycho-pedagogical training, also do not have at least a Master level. These teachers are called turbo teachers because they teach part-time in more than na institution. They are often criticized in the media and social networks and presented as the weakest link in contributing for the quality of education.

This research project will be about the validation and adaptation to Mozambican reality the so-called Student's Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) questionnaire proposed by (Marsh,1987, 1991, 2001). It has been used by several studies over more than two decades and in diferente academic contexts, having proven to be reliable and valid, allowing a robust generalization of the results obtained (Marsh & Roche, 1997). Its application to Mozambique, will be a pioneering study in this field.

 In this context, scientific research that examines the students' perception of quality in HE, in the country, is of national interest, namely because students are the primary target in this process. This research will allow the validation of a standardized instrument which identifies the elements that can be improved by each HEI in order to guarantee the satisfaction of its largest customers, the students.

Specifically, we intend to:

Contribute to the process of quality's evaluation of HE courses with an instrument that has the support of students' opinion in each organic unit;

Create a Model to produce a perceptive index of academic quality.

Our major goals are:

To evaluate students' perception about the quality of teaching in undergraduate courses in Mozambique;

To measure the current and real level of HE's quality using a comparative analysis of the perception index of academic quality among HE institutions.

Two major research questions arise a priori:

The quality of higher education in Mozambique is considered poor;
The poor quality of higher education in Mozambique is related to the quality and performance of higher education teachers.

These research questions are based on the following assumptions

Low percentage of teachers with Masters and PhD level;
High percentage of teachers without psychoeducational and teaching training to form graduates;

"Turbo" Teachers in HE  who teach part-time more than one subject in more than one institution with precarious contracts;

Existence of organic units operating in leased premises without minimum conditions for the operation of a HEI;

Existence of teachers unable to give a lecture without overhead projectors;
Obligation to meet the targets about the percentages of successful students to ensure the renewal of precarious contracts;

Theoretical Framework

In Africa, the evaluation of HE's quality has become a priority for several HE systems, mainlly after the supply's liberalization and the entry of the private sector as a service provider in this area since the 1990s (Wangenge-Ouma & Langa, 2010 ).

The  European Foudation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence and Self-Assessment Model highlights the multidimensionality inherent in HE's quality. This model focuses on factors for quality (leadership, people, politics and strategies, partnerships, resources and processes) and their effect on teachers and students' performance and in the society as a whole through the cross-promotion of innovation and learning (Gama, 2004). Castro (1993) argues that the transposition of this concept of industrial origin to the university world is far from linear and much less widely accepted by the academic community. 

The project covers some HE Institutions in the country, distributed through the 11 provinces. According to the legislation in force, the HE Institutions are classified in: Universities, Higher Institutes, Polytechnic Institutes, Schools and Academies. The sample will be stratified by Province, HE's Institution and undergraduate courses. A total of 4 curricular units per course will be evaluated. For the validation of the instrument, we analyze the psychometric aspects of the survey variables as a way of assessing their suitability in the context of HE in Mozambique The survey covers around 2,000 students. Students evaluates a curricular unit of the course they have been attending during the data collection period. All students will have the same opportunity to freely and independently evaluate the course unit selected for evaluation. In order to reduce the potential bias due to stress' effects arising from grades, the survey is launched in a period not coincident with examinations. In qualitative terms, in addition to the exploratory descriptive analysis, we make a content analysis centered on the last open question of the survey. As far as quantitative analysis is concerned, we cross several variables to detect possible significant association. A factorial analysis (PCA) is done allowing to transform the set of initial correlated variables in another set of uncorrelated (orthogonal) variables, which result from linear combinations of the initial set of data as well as a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) (Reis, 2001). Finally, we estimate the contribution of a set of determinants for the explanation of the quality index using a Multiple Linear Regression Model (MRLM).

We hope to validate an instrument accepted by the National Council of Higher Education Quality Assessment in Mozambique - CNAQ, recognized and implemented by all organizational units of higher education institutions in Mozambique and evaluate, with a scientific basis, the quality of higher education in Mozambique based on the perception of undergraduate students. We also expect to define a multiple linear regression model that allows the yearly production of an index of satisfaction of academic quality and highlight the main factors that affect it.

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