Update on the revision of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG)

The Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) in the European Higher Education Area were adopted by the European Ministers for Education in Bergen in 2005. Since then, the ESG – prepared by the E4 Group (ENQA, ESU, EURASHE and EUA) – have underpinned the development of both institutional and national/regional QA systems in Europe.
However, the European quality assurance landscape has changed considerably since this time. Thus, from 2010 to 2012 the stakeholder organisations that form the E4 Group carried out the “Mapping the Implementation and Application of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (MAP-ESG)” project to gather information on how the ESG have been implemented and applied. The project demonstrated that the ESG have been successful in promoting an understanding of good practice in QA, and have impacted on the development of QA both at system and institutional level. The E4 Group decided, nevertheless, to recommend to European education ministers that the ESG would benefit from a revision “in order to improve their clarity, applicability and usefulness”. More...