University autonomy and accountability: the relationships between state, higher education institutions and society

Abstract

University autonomy and accountability are central points at heart of governance reforms, which is essence of the relations between state, university and society. University autonomy must be accompanied with institution accountability as two sides of a coint.  University Council and independent accreditation agencies are schemes that enable the schools to hold their accountable. University Council is representatives of all stakeholders, in other words, presents public interests in supervision of university administrations.  Accreditation agencies are civil society scheme designed to help schools improving their performance and to provide public with information about the universities. University autonomy has been a bottle-neck issue which hindered innovations at institutional level. Therefore it is unavoidable matter in developing high quality higher education institutions as it is prerequisite for their success.