Relaunching National Evaluation and Quality Assurance: Expectations and Preparations

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe and analyse the design of the evaluation and quality assurance system decided by the Swedish Parliament in 2016. Particular stress is put on how one part of this system-the institutional reviews of the higher education institutions' internal quality assurance processes-was set up by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (SHEA). The aim was to explore governing of higher education in the signals expressed through the design and requirements decided by the SHEA. The SHEA public reports, guidelines, criteria, and templates for the higher education institutions and evaluators, and interviews with SHEA staff were used for this purpose. The analysis shows that the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area were important influences in the design work. It also shows that the design supports the governing by objectives and outcomes logic and a notion of "quality" in higher education as equivalent to work with internal quality assurance systems at higher education institutions. We argue that this design forms the basis for constitutive effects like an instrumental notion of higher education.