The word “audit” suggests a judgmental, after-the-fact evaluation, yet the reasons and advantages for conducting audits seem largely developmental. Is this a contradiction?
No. Academic audits invite departments to describe the strengths and weaknesses of their efforts to improve the academic quality of their programs and identify plans for improvement. Such activities are clearly developmental. The audit visit consists mainly of conversations between team members and faculty. Experience shows that the conversations evolve in a developmental way, even when there is an element of judgment at the end. The audit report identifies areas where the quality efforts are exemplary, and also where they need improvement. While calls for improvement inevitably have a judgmental character, criticism of a department’s quality efforts is less likely to undermine the evaluation’s developmental goals than, say, citing a professor for poor teaching. As is typical with audit, the University of Missouri has declared that audit’s developmental aspects should be paramount in program design.
