Recent Trends in Quality Assurance? Observations from the Agencies’ Perspective

Abstract

Quality assurance in European higher education has reached the top of the political and the higher education agendas. However, it is just one item on a long list of reform agendas in higher education, such as funding and management of higher education institutions, and not least the reforms in teaching and learning in the frame of and initiated by the Bologna Process. Without a doubt, over the last 20 years the emergence of national quality assurance regimes has been a common feature of European higher education, a development that even gained momentum when quality assurance turned out to be one pillar of setting up a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) through the Bologna Process. The report on the evaluation of the Bologna Process, submitted to ministers when they officially launched the EHEA in 2010, highlighted that in almost all countries quality assurance systems and procedures have been implemented in accordance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) adopted in 2005. It was pointed out that this should be seen as a major success for the Bologna Process (Westerheijden et al., 2010, p. 30). The relevance and the consequences of this development shouldn’t be underestimated. EUA’s 2010 ‘Trends Report’ revealed that quality assurance is considered the most important recent policy change (Sursock and Smidt, 2010).