The question of quality emerged slowly as an important factor for the success of the Bologna process and received only cursory mention in the original Bologna Declaration. However, as ministers met every two years to take stock of progress and define mid-term objectives, the issue of quality kept growing in importance, until it rose to the fore of the ministerial agenda. The Berlin Communiqué (2003) marked a major turning point by stating that “consistent with the principle of institutional autonomy, the primary responsibility for quality assurance in higher education lies with each institution itself”.
Quality assurance in European higher education comprises three levels:
1. Institutional level: Enhancing quality
EUA has taken the lead in developing the capacity of higher education institutions to create internal quality processes through the Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) and various projects such as Quality Culture, Creativity in Higher Education and and  Quality Assurance for the Higher Education Change Agenda (QAHECA). This last resulting in recommendations for HEIs and QA agencies on how to develop QA processes which can enhance creativity and innovation in higher education. In 2006, EUA also published Guidelines for Quality Enhancement in European Joint Master Programmes. Currently EUA is working on a project called Examining Quality Culture (EQC) through which it aims – along with its partners QAA Scotland and HRK from Germany – to map internal quality assurance processes in European higher education institutions and promote sharing of good practices.
2. National level: Enhancing external accountability procedures
Many countries that have signed the Bologna Declaration have at least one quality assurance or accreditation agency. Many of these agencies, as well as EUA, are members of the European Association for Quality Assurance (ENQA).
3. European level: Promoting the development of a European dimension for quality assurance
Since September 2001, EUA has been meeting regularly with ENQA, ESIB and EURASHE (E4 Group) to discuss how to develop a European dimension for quality assurance. This partnership resulted in the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) which were adopted by the European Ministers for Education in Bergen in 2005. In relation to the ESGs, EUA – along with other E4 Group members – is currently working on a project that aims to map the experiences of various stakeholders in implementing the ESGs. At EUA’s initiative, the E4 organises an annual European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF)  since 2006. The EQAF gathers together QA agencies and higher education institutions at European level in order to bring forward a European QA agenda based on a broad understanding of what constitutes best QA practices in the context of European higher education trends. EUA is one of the founding members, along with other E4 Group members, of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR). 
International level
Alongside its involvement in European policy development, EUA is also active internationally to ensure the visibility of European higher education on the world stage. Through its membership in INQAAHE, the CHEA International Commission, the UNESCO Global Forum and by lending its QA expertise to such multinational organisations as OECD, EUA strives to shape the international QA discussions as well.
The annual EQAF
EQAF 2011 – Quality and Trust: at the heart of what we do
The sixth European Quality Assurance Forum, entitled “Quality and Trust: at the heart of what we do”, will be hosted by the University of Antwerp and Artesis University College on 17-19 November 2011, and will take place in Antwerp, Belgium. Through a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, EQAF 2011 will specifically aim to explore the impact and essence of both internal and external QA, and how QA can be further developed to serve these better.
5th European Quality Assurance Forum (Lyon, 2010). Building bridges: Making sense of quality assurance in European, national and institutional context.A selection of papers from the 5th EQAF.
4th European Quality Assurance Forum (Copenhagen, 2009). Creativity and Diversity: Challenges for quality assurance beyond 2010. A selection of papers from the 4th EQAF.
3rd European Quality Assurance Forum (Budapest, 2008). Trends in Quality Assurance. A selection of papers from the 3rd EQAF.
2nd European Quality Assurance Forum (Rome, 2007). Implementing and Using Quality Assurance: Strategy and Practice. A selection of papers from the 2nd EQAF.
1st European Forum for Quality Assurance (Munich, 2006). Embedding Quality Culture in Higher Education. A selection of papers from the 1st EQAF.

Quality assurance at Dutch research universities concerns research groups as well as degree programmes. Research groups are subject to a research assessment scheme, degree programmes are monitored in an accreditation scheme. Standard Evaluation Protocol 2009-2015. Code of conduct for scientific practice.
Research assessment
Every six years the quality of research institutes and research groups at Dutch research universities is systematically assessed. Universities organise the assessment themselves and appoint an independent international peer-review committee. Next to an overall assessment of an institute, the quality, productivity, viability and relevance of all research groups are evaluated. PhD programmes are also included in this process. In addition to the external evaluation, an internal evaluation of the institutes takes place every three years.
The present research quality assurance system has been in use since the 1990s. Up until 2003, the VSNU had been responsible for organising nation-wide evaluations on discipline level. Since 2003 the universities themselves have organised the research assessments based on the Standard Evaluation Protocol (SEP). In this protocol, established by the VSNU, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), emphasis is placed on the international position of institutes and research groups. The protocol is periodically reviewed by an independent expert committee.
Accreditation
All university degree courses are permanently subjected to internal quality control and external assessment. The current system of external quality assurance started in 2002/3 with the introduction of the bachelor-master structure in the Netherlands. All degree programmes have to be accredited by the Netherlands-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) to be eligible for recognition and funding by the government. Accredited programmes are listed in the Central Register of Higher Education Programmes (CROHO). Students can only apply for financial support and receive nationally recognised degrees if they enrol in accredited programmes.
Accreditation is granted on the basis of an evaluation report produced once every six years by an external assessment panel. The assessment panel judges the self-evaluation report of the programme under review and carries out on-the-spot inspections. Protocols ensure a transparent, systematic and reliable assessment of programmes in accordance with national and international benchmarks. Failure either to comply with or to meet the standards laid down in these protocols leads to enforced study programme closure. Within the framework of the Bologna process European countries are working towards the mutual recognition of their accreditation decisions.

By David Glenn. In a year when public concern about the cost and purpose of college education is rising, a new survey has revealed an undercurrent of anxiety among college presidents about the quality of teaching and learning on their campuses.
More than a quarter of the presidents in the Pew Research Center survey, done in association with The Chronicle, said they worried that their faculty members were grading too leniently. More than half said students spent less time studying than they did a decade ago. And when asked how the public should assess a college's quality, the presidents did not show much faith in the student-engagement surveys and student-learning examinations that have come to prominence in the last decade. Instead, the yardsticks that got the most support were measures whose reliability is often questioned: graduation rates and accreditation. "It's surprising to me how relatively low the numbers were for any kind of assessment measures or surveys of engagement as effective gauges of college quality," said David C. Paris, executive director of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability. Only 17 percent of presidents surveyed regarded those tools as "very effective."
"Presidents clearly don't think there are surveys or tests out there that really get them to effective assessment," said Mr. Paris, whose organization has recruited 76 presidents to sign public pledges to improve learning on their campuses. "In some ways, that's a depressing finding. We still have a long way to go as an industry in getting to the point of saying, This is what quality is, and here's how we'll know it."
Barbara Couture, president of New Mexico State University, agrees with Mr. Paris that higher education needs to develop universally understood measures of quality. But she believes those measures should have more to do with labor-market outcomes than with direct tests of learning. "The measure I didn't see on the survey, which is one I think we're all being asked to respond to, was, How well are students being prepared to enter the workplace?" she said. Ms. Couture believes that as states develop more-sophisticated longitudinal-data systems, the public will demand to see reports about the average salaries and unemployment rates of people who majored in a particular field at a particular college. But she cautioned that such reports would need to be interpreted carefully, taking into account the characteristics of the students who attend each institution. "What we're proud of here is that we take in students who are low-income, first-generation college students," Ms. Couture said.
Other college leaders are not so enthusiastic about using the labor market as a bellwether of college quality. David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, said the public discourse about job preparation had become toxic. "There's this idea that the purpose of college is to train you for that first job, and anything else is just sort of extra, a waste of money," he said. Narrow vocationalism, he fears, will erode colleges' traditional missions of civic preparation and scientific inquiry. But if Mr. Oxtoby dislikes Ms. Couture's vision of labor-market measures, he is equally skeptical of Mr. Paris's desire for better public yardsticks of learning. Mr. Oxtoby is not an admirer of the National Survey of Student Engagement or the Collegiate Learning Assessment, and he was pleased to see that such measures were not strongly endorsed in the survey.
"The fact that presidents are all over the board in terms of different ways to assess quality—to me, that's just a reflection of reality," Mr. Oxtoby said. "There's not a single measure. There are many different measures. "I think this whole set of answers just shows that we don't have good indicators for the public," he continued. "I don't think any of them by themselves are very valid. Nor is there going to be some magic bullet down the road if we just work harder."
The Land of the Easy A
If presidents have mixed emotions about external measures of learning, they are also uneasy about their campuses' primary internal measures: grades. Twenty-seven percent of presidents surveyed said they believed their faculty members graded too leniently. "I do fall on that side of worrying about leniency," said Douglas C. Bennett, president of Earlham College. "Every grading system we've had for the last 150 years winds up suffering from inflation, and the only way we ever fix that is to throw out the grading system and introduce a new one. You have to throw away the currency and issue entirely new currency."
So what can presidents do to accelerate that process? Mr. Oxtoby said that presidents can set a tone, but that combating grade inflation really needs to be the work of faculty leaders. Pomona's faculty recently clarified what is meant by A, B, C, and D grades, with the aim of making C's and D's seem less radioactive to students. "We want to provide some standards and encourage instructors to use a broader range of grades," Mr. Oxtoby said. "Because grading, of course, becomes much less useful if everyone is getting an A."
Presidents' concern about lenient grading did not vary by their institutions' selectivity, but it did vary by institutional type. Thirty-three percent of presidents of four-year private institutions said they worried about grading, but only 24 percent of those at four-year public colleges said they did. The poster child for that theme might be E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University. Mr. Gee said he was pleased with the grading standards at Ohio State. "Our faculty are very responsible about grading," he said. "Our deans and our department chairs look pretty closely at those patterns."
But when Mr. Gee was previously a president of private institutions, he said, grade inflation was a persistent concern. "At Vanderbilt and Brown, we had to work very hard on that problem. We used to laugh about the fact that 90 percent of our students were in the top 10 percent, which meant that our grading procedures were significantly skewed." The public-private discrepancy should be no surprise, Pomona's Mr. Oxtoby said. The intimacy of the smaller classes at many private colleges, he said, makes professors wince at giving C's. "At a public university, if you've got a class of 200, it's just a name on a piece of paper, whereas here, you know the particular student. You think, 'How could I possibly give a low grade and hurt this student's future chances?"
Students Lounge?
Fifty-two percent of presidents said they believed students were studying less than their counterparts did a decade ago. (Interestingly, the presidents who were least likely to say that were those who had been in office for 11 years or more.) Mr. Bennett, of Earlham, said those numbers should be interpreted cautiously. At his own institution, and at similar liberal-arts colleges, he said, students are being asked to do more demanding and sophisticated assignments than they were a decade ago. "When you ask students, How much are you reading? How much are you writing?, there's quite a spread across institutions," he said.
Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, president of Kalamazoo College, said she believed that the survey reflected a healthy level of ferment among college leaders about the improvement of college learning. "There's a lot of debate out there," she said. "Each institution needs to find a way of communicating its learning outcomes, and there are lots of complex conversations about what those things might be. It's not as if institutions are running away from the responsibility."

« Quality Assurance : foundation for the future », thème de la conférence du 4 au 7 avril 2011 de l’INQAAHE, réseau international des agences d’assurance qualité de l’enseignement supérieur.
La Conférence 2011 de l’INQAAHE, The International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education, s’est tenue à Madrid, du 4 au 7 avril derniers. Ce fut l’occasion de célébrer les 20 ans de l’association, créée pour fédérer et promouvoir les principes et pratiques internationales dans l’assurance qualité de l’enseignement supérieur. Les agences d’évaluation et les universités, impliquées dans les processus qualité de ces institutions, composent la majorité de ses 200 membres.
Tous les 2 ans, le réseau se réunit lors d’une conférence pour échanger sur les bonnes pratiques et expériences en matière de démarche qualité et d’évaluation de l’enseignement supérieur.
L’édition 2011, inaugurée par le Prince des Asturies, a permis d’aborder les thématiques suivantes:
* Globalisation de forces et d’objectifs nationaux/régionaux dans l’enseignement supérieur : problématiques émergentes
* Professionnalisation de l’assurance qualité
* Processus efficaces pour la diversité, le développement et la continuité de qualité
* Indépendance de la qualité par rapport aux parties prenantes
* Problématiques autour des classements (ranking)
Plus de 350 participants de 70 pays ont ainsi fait le déplacement dont trois représentants de l’AERES. Cette diversité n'en a pas moins permis de dégager des problématiques communes aux agences d’évaluation telles que le choix et l’indépendance des experts, la pertinence des indicateurs d’évaluation et le développement de la culture du management de la qualité au sein des entités évaluées. Voir les articles du blog INQAAHE Conference 2011 et INQAAHE Conference 2009.

22nd International Conference for Higher Education: Quality in Higher Education, Ankara, Turkey (17-19 June 2011)
The 22nd International Conference for Higher Education on the theme of “Quality in Higher Education” will be hosted by Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey from 17-19 June 2011.
Participants and speakers will be invited to contribute and to exchange views and experiences about how to improve quality in higher education.
Quality in Higher Education
Quality in higher education requires an environment of academic freedom and well equipped institutions capable of developing knowledge and enriching the minds of students.
Quality for universities and academic communities means the pursuit of excellence, by attracting the best scholars and students and achieving better outcomes than other institutions, in other words to be the best or one of the best.
Such success must be based on fair intellectual competition, honesty and integrity.
Independence from political influence and economic pressure is crucial. Dogmatism and fundamentalism in the occident and the orient were hindering intellectual independence, free dialogue and publication of new findings centuries ago (Galileo, Averroes). Still today freedom of teaching and research is not guaranteed everywhere, especially in totalitarian systems and ideological areas.
Stanford University's motto "Die Luft der Freiheit weht" (The wind of freedom blows) illuminates this precondition of quality and excellence. But what about other conditions? What is the general framework of excellence? What constitutes top quality? What leads to a world class university? Are instruments like peer review, management of quality improvement, quality assurance systems, rankings etc. suitable tools?
Proposals for presentations can be made by 30 April 2011. Registration deadline is 15 May 2011. For more information and to register, visit the event website.
The International Conference on Higher Education was created on the initiative of İhsan Doğramacı, eminent Turkish pediatrician and educator, in 1981. It is a meeting of minds on significant issues in higher education, primarily university governance. It assembles experts in higher education (heads/administrators of higher education institutions, scholars, researchers and representatives of interested organizations and foundations).
The Conference is international with participants from all corners of the world, including North and Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The Conference is independent, not linked to any national or international organization. It is a free forum for the exchange of opinions and experiences, views, and new trends in higher education and its management.
I.C.H.E. Bilkent University 06800 Ankara Turkey. Telephone: +90 312 266 4598 +90 312 266 4598 Fax: +90 312 266 4678, Email: iche@intconfhighered.org.

Call for contributions: 6th European Quality Assurance Forum, Antwerp, Belgium (17-19 November 2011)
EUA is pleased to announce that the 6th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) will take place at the University of Antwerp and Artesis University College, Belgium, from 17-19 November 2011.
Based on the popularity of this event and feedback received from previous editions, the 2011 Forum, entitled “Quality and trust: at the heart of what we do”, will increase opportunities for exchanging experiences among colleagues, sharing institutional practices, and discovering new QA developments. Through a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, EQAF 2011 will aim to explore the impact and essence of both internal and external QA, and how QA can be further developed to serve these better. More specifically, the Forum plenary sessions will concentrate on reinforcing the idea that improving the quality of provision should remain the essential focus of QA, since it is this that will lead to trust-building among the stakeholders. See 5th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF).
The Forum organisers, ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE, have now opened a call for contributions from QA practitioners in higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies, students, institutional leaders and researchers in the field. Two types of contributions are sought: papers and workshops. The deadline to submit contributions is 1 August 2011. For more information, download the call here.

EUA is pleased to announce the launch of a new publication: "Building Bridges – Making sense of quality assurance in European, national and institutional contexts”. The publication assembles a selection of keynote presentations and the excellent papers that contributed to lively discussions at the 5th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) which was held at the University Claude Bernard Lyon I, France on 18-20 November 2010 and gathered together around 500 academics and experts in quality assurance.
The keynotes and papers discuss how quality assurance tools and processes implemented at institutional and agency level relate to European and national level policy discussions, and interact with and support institutional QA frameworks and the development of a quality culture in European higher education institutions. In addition, this publication marks the 5th anniversary of EQAF by including a short historical account and further reflection on the discussions that have taken place over the years and in particular during the 2010 Forum.
Please click here to download the publication.

"Révision de la norme internationale ISO 9001 et 1ers résultats de l’enquête ISO", rencontres en régions. AFNOR Normalisation organise 15 rencontres en France pour découvrir les pistes de développement autour de cette révision de la norme internationale ISO 9001 et les premiers résultats de l’enquête ISO.
MARSEILLE: 1er avril 2011 après-midi. NICE: 4 avril 2011 après-midi. Bulletin d'inscription.
Dans le cadre de la révision de la norme ISO 9001, l'ISO, Organisation Internationale de Normalisation, et son comité technique ISO/TC 176 « Management et assurance de la qualité » organisent, jusqu'au 28 février 2011, une enquête internationale.
L'objectif est de recueillir avis et expériences sur l’actuelle norme, et les besoins pour son prochain modèle.
Rejoignez-nous le temps d’une demi-journée pour découvrir les pistes de développement autour de cette révision et les premiers résultats de l’enquête ISO!
15 rencontres en France entre le 22 mars et le 30 mai 2011. Au programme :
* La future norme ISO 9001 : la révision, le calendrier prévisionnel
* Retour sur l’enquête internationale de l'ISO en avant première
* Témoignage d’entreprise
* Plateformes d’échanges: un réseau d’entreprises régionales pour suivre l'actualité normative et préparer son organisation aux évolutions
* Présentation de la vie associative AFNOR
Dans l'attente de notre prochaine rencontre, nous vous invitons à répondre à l’enquête ISO jusqu'au 28 février 2011 en cliquant sur le lien suivant: www.iso.org.

The rising demand for education and training has led to a great expansion in the provision of education services. But this expansion raises concerns about quality. Do we understand what knowledge or skills a training programme offers? How can we judge whether a course of study is effective? Do we share a common language on these issues, and are we sure we correctly understand the terms employed? For the EU-27, with its current 501 million citizens and single labour market, such questions are hardly academic: common understanding leads to common trust.
Cedefop’s new glossary of terms on quality in education and training is meant to promote communication and understanding between countries. It is intended for all stakeholders in education and VET, researchers; experts; those involved in improving learning curricula; and education and training providers. While it does not represent an exhaustive inventory of the terminology used by specialists, the glossary – an updated and extended version of Quality in training / La qualite dans la formation published by Cedefop in 2003, takes into account recent EU policy developments, including the creation of the European qualifications framework for lifelong learning (EQF) and the development of a European credit system for vocational education and training (ECVET).
Accreditation of an education or training provider
Process of quality assurance through which accredited status is granted to an education or training provider, showing it has been approved by the relevant legislative or professional authorities by having met predetermined standards. Source: Cedefop, 2008c, based on Canadian.
FR Agrément dʼun prestataire dʼenseignement ou de formation
Procédure de contrôle qualité visant à la reconnaissance et approbation officielles dʼun prestataire dʼenseignement ou de formation par lʼautorité législative ou professionnelle compétente après vérification de la conformité vis-à-vis de certaines normes prédéfinies. Source: Cedefop, 2008c, adapté de Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, 2003.
Validation of learning outcomes
Confirmation by a competent body that learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and/or competences) acquired by an individual in a formal, non-formal or informal setting have been assessed against predefined criteria and are compliant with the requirements of a validation standard. Validation typically leads to certification. Source: Cedefop, 2008c.
FR validation des résultats dʼapprentissage
La confirmation par une autorité compétente que les résultats/acquis dʼapprentissage (savoirs, aptitudes et/ou compétences) acquis par un individu dans un contexte formel, non formel ou informel, ont été évalués selon des critères prédéfinis et sont conformes aux exigences dʼune norme (ou référentiel) de validation. La validation aboutit habituellement à la certification. Source: Cedefop, 2008c.