UTP — Automated Professor Attestation

University professor attestation at the University of Telecommunications and Posts (UTP) was a manual, paper-heavy process that consumed hundreds of man-hours every semester. Faculty administrators distributed paper questionnaires, collected them by hand, and entered results into spreadsheets one form at a time. The entire cycle — from distribution to final report — took months, by which point the data was too stale to drive meaningful improvements.

Students had no convenient way to provide honest feedback. Paper forms were distributed and collected in the same classroom where the professor was present, creating an inherent bias. Many students skipped the process entirely because it felt tedious and futile — their feedback disappeared into a bureaucratic void with no visible outcome. Response rates were low, and the data that was collected was often incomplete or unreliable.

For university leadership, the attestation had become a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine quality improvement tool. Without timely, comprehensive data, there was no way to identify underperforming courses, recognize excellent teaching, or compare quality across departments. The gap between what the attestation could be and what it actually delivered was growing wider each year.

The automated system eliminated over 100 man-hours of manual work per attestation cycle — time previously spent on printing, distributing, collecting, and data-entering paper forms. Results are now available in real time rather than months after the fact, transforming the attestation from a retrospective report into a live quality management tool. Professors can see their feedback mid-semester and adjust their teaching approach while it still matters.

The platform achieved an average professor rating of 8.8 out of 10, indicating strong overall teaching quality at UTP and providing a reliable baseline for identifying both excellence and areas for improvement. The dramatically higher response rates — enabled by the 30-second mobile experience — mean the data is statistically robust and representative of the entire student body, not just the small fraction who bothered with paper forms.

The deployment attracted national attention and was covered by BTA (Bulgarian Telegraph Agency) at a dedicated press conference, positioning UTP as a leader in educational technology adoption. At just one euro per student per year, the economic case is compelling for any university. Discussions are underway for adoption at additional Bulgarian universities, with UTP serving as the reference implementation for a sector-wide transformation of how higher education measures and improves teaching quality.