Quality assurance in European engineering education - The EUR-ACE quality label. Contribution à la World Summit on Accreditation (WOSA 2012)- New Delhi. Prof. REMAUD Bernard, Commission des Titres d'Ingénieurs (CTI - France). Download the Document.
In a worldwide context, the accreditation agencies have to provide employers, students and the general public with clear information on the engineering programme outcomes to facilitate the international mobility of students and professionals.
These challenges must be addressed taking into account the diversity of the national education systems and regulations for the engineering profession. The agencies have to elaborate common standards and procedures, while preserving the national cultural and economic specificities.
The European situation is very illustrative in this respect with a wide diversity of education systems and professional regulations. For the engineers, one may observe a wide range for the expected programmes outcomes; in some countries, an engineer is rather an expert in a specific technical domain; in others, he (she) is more a project or team manager with a scientific background.
In this paper, we describe the European Higher Education Area (Bologna process); then we focus on the specific situation of engineering education. We then present the CTI (Commission des Titres d'Ingénieurs – France) as a typical accreditation agency for engineering programmes and the European EUR-ACE project, which has defined the Framework Standards for the engineering programmes and their accrediting agencies. We conclude with a review of the main issues under discussion in Europe. Download the Document.

UNESCO recognized access, equity and quality, as the major challenges of higher education in the world in the current context of globalization. Likewise, it encourages all higher education institutions (HEIs) to maintain their role of serving society, community and individuals, and continue to drive education as a public service. This understanding poses universal access as a precondition for its achievement.
The thematic area include programmes and initiatives that favour equality in access to higher education, i.e. that promote access for social groups traditionally excluded from higher education (HE) or with explicit difficulties; positive discrimination policies, scholarship programmes based on prioritisation criteria, policies that promote completion of studies by groups with a high drop-out risk, among other relevant issues of the item.
The key question is how to define quality in different contexts, so that the world’s higher education systems can face the challenge of meeting social commitment. Quality is the result of a set of actions that respond to society’s needs at a particular moment in time. It should be draw on past and ancient knowledge. The definition of quality depends therefore, on a solid cultural background, which is essential to understand a world that is undergoing profound changes. Quality has to be seen as a social construction and, as such, requires reflection, dialogue and a collective effort, especially with regard to training citizens who are committed to strategies to overcome inequality and social injustice and projects to improve the society.
If quality is a multi-dimensional, multi-level concept, and if any process designed to guarantee quality is pervaded by the socio-cultural peculiarities of the institutional, national and regional contexts, then it is unfeasible to try to identify a single valid model.
The main, fundamental commitment of universities is towards quality in their core activities: teaching and research. But university teaching and research must be included in the major objectives of society and in the strategies of the state to establish a fair, developed and democratic nation. This means that universities must promote policies towards the construction of the human bases of social transformation. They must also develop knowledge and transform individuals into citizens that have the cognitive, emotional and social skills and the ethical, cultural and political values and that are coherently committed to building a democratic society.
Efforts to improve the quality of higher education must not fail to consider the criterion of relevance. The main target should be those aspects that endorse the universities’ responsibility and relevance in relation to the changes they undergo.

EUA is pleased to announce that the 7th European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) will take place at Tallinn University, Estonia, from 22 to 24 November 2012.
The European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF), an annual event co-organised by EUA, ENQA, EURASHE and ESU, is the European conference on quality assurance in higher education that brings together all of the key stakeholders in the field – higher education institutions, quality assurance agencies and students. This event is considered by the four co-organising partners as a major contribution to QA in higher education, and a flagship activity in this field.
Through a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, the 2012 EQAF, entitled “How does Quality Assurance Make a Difference?”, will combine practice-oriented or research-based discussions that will take place in paper sessions and workshops with presentations of current developments in quality assurance (QA). This year, the event will specifically explore the impact of external and internal QA on higher education policies and institutional realities.
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.
Within the framework of this year’s EQAF theme, the organisers would like to encourage paper and workshop proposals that address issues such as external evaluation and institutional follow-up; the relationship between QA, pedagogical approaches and student learning; QA supporting institutional aims and goals; QA supporting informed decision-making and the role of QA in globalised higher education.
The deadline to submit contributions is 31 July 2012.
The call for contributions and proposal submission forms are available here.
Download the:

• Call for contributions
• Submission form for papers
• Submission form for workshops 

Further information on the event, including the programme and registration information, is due to be available in June.

The European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education (EQANIE) is a non-profit association seeking to enhance evaluation and quality assurance of informatics study programmes and education in Europe. It was founded on January 9th, 2009 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
EQANIE develops criteria and procedures for the evaluation and quality assurance in informatics study programmes and education. Furthermore, it develops and maintains a system for the award of a European quality-label for informatics degree programmes as well as its protection and continued further development.
It provides information about events, activities and publications relevant to quality assurance in informatics education and lists study programmes that have been awarded the Euro-Inf quality label. EQANIE maintains contacts and relations to other European or non-European organisations important for the goals of the Association.
It promotes the development of national and regional accreditation bodies.
EQANIE is organises events, seminars, workshops and conferences in its field of activities.
Background
EQANIE is to be seen in the broader political context of the Bologna Process, aiming at the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The Bologna Process is closely related to the – more economically focussed –Lisbon-Strategy and its objective of developing a “European Knowledge Society“.EQANIE was founded in January 2009 to contribute to these objectives.
The Association is part of the follow-up process to the Euro-Inf Project which was co-financed by the European Union under the Socrates Programme. From 2006 until 2008, the Euro-Inf Project established and tested Framework Standards and Accreditation Criteria for Informatics Programmes in Europe.
EQANIE holds full rights of ownership and copyright on the assessment tools developed by Euro-Inf.
Objectives
Main objectives of EQANIE in the area of accreditation and quality assessment are:
    Improving the quality of educational programmes in informatics;
    providing an appropriate “European label” for accredited educational programmes in informatics;
    facilitating mutual transnational recognition by programme validation and certification;
    facilitating recognition by the competent authorities, in accord with the EU directives and other agreements;
    increasing mobility of graduates as recommended by the Lisbon Strategy
Consistent with the framework of the Bologna process, accreditation will distinguish between the first and second study cycle; it will cover informatics degree programmes of all types of Higher Education Institutions (HEI).
The hitherto existing results of the so-called Thematic Networks and the Tuning-project build the ground on which EQANIE’s activities are based. Since participating institutions of EQANIE actively take part in the Network for the Accreditation of Engineering Education (ENAEE) and the Eurobachelor/Euromaster project of the European Chemistry Thematic Network Association (ECTNA), the project particularly takes into account the positive experience and results gathered there.
Constitution Act and Statutes of EQANIE, Version March 07, 2011.

Is there an emerging consensus?
What is the quality of education? What are the most important aspects of quality and how can they be measured?
These questions have been raised for a long time and are still widely debated. The current understanding of education quality has considerably benefitted from the conceptual work undertaken through national and international initiatives to assess learning achievement. These provide valuable feedback to policy-makers on the competencies mastered by pupils and youths, and the factors which explain these. But there is also a growing awareness of the importance of values and behaviours, although these are more difficult to measure.  
To address these concerns, IIEP organized (on 15 December 2011) a Strategic Debate on “Defining and measuring the quality of education: Is there an emerging consensus?” The topic was approached from the point of view of two cross-national surveys: the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ)*.
Assessing the creativity of students
“Students’ capacity to extrapolate from what they know and apply this creatively in novel situations is more important than what the students know”, said Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division at the Directorate for Education, OECD, and in charge of PISA. This concept is reflected in current developments taking place in workplaces in many countries, which increasingly require non-routine interactive skills. When comparing the results obtained in different countries, PISA’s experience has shown that “education systems can creatively combine the equity and quality agenda in education”, Schleicher said. Contrary to conventional wisdom, countries can be both high-average performers in PISA while demonstrating low individual and institutional variance in students’ achievement. Finally, Schleicher emphasized that investment in education is not the only determining factor for quality, since good and consistent implementation of educational policy is also very important.
The importance of cross-national cooperation
When reviewing the experience of SACMEQ, Mioko Saito, Head a.i of the IIEP Equity, Access and Quality Unit (technically supporting the SACMEQ implementation in collaboration with SACMEQ Coordinating Centre), explained how the notion of educational quality has significantly evolved in the southern and eastern African region and became a priority over the past decades. Since 1995, SACMEQ has, on a regular basis, initiated cross-national assessments on the quality of education, and each member country has benefited considerably from this cooperation. It helped them embracing new assessment areas (such as HIV and AIDS knowledge) and units of analysis (teachers, as well as pupils) to produce evidence on what pupils and teachers know and master, said Saito. She concluded by stressing that SACMEQ also has a major capacity development mission and is concerned with having research results bear on policy decisions.  
The debate following the presentations focused on the crucial role of the media in stimulating public debate on the results of cross-national tests such as PISA and SACMEQ. It was also emphasized that more collaboration among the different cross-national mechanisms for the assessment of learner achievement would be beneficial. If more items were shared among the networks, more light could be shed on the international comparability of educational outcomes.
View or review the presentations and the debate. Click here to launch the video.
Download the presentations: Andreas Schleicher, Mioko Saito.
* PISA assesses the acquisition of key competencies for adult life of 15-year-olds in mathematics, reading, and science in OECD countries. SACMEQ focuses on achievements of Grade 6 pupils. Created in 1995, SACMEQ is a network of 15 southern and eastern African ministries of education: Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (Mainland), Tanzania (Zanzibar), Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Links: IIEP activities of quality of education, PISA website, SACMEQ website.

Red tapism has curbed the supply of institutions, leading to a brain drain. India figured second-last among 73 countries that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment test conducted annually by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) secretariat. This does come as a nasty surprise to those who believed in the prowess of India's scientific and technological manpower. There are, however, three ways of looking at this. First, Indian students aren't smart, despite having access to quality teachers. Second, Indian students are actually smart, but because of want of access to quality education they aren't able to perform well. There is also a third possibility: There are both quality education institutes, and smart students in India. However, these smart students prefer to explore options outside India — for jobs, or for pursuing higher education — leaving the poorer quality students in India.
DEMAND, SUPPLY FACTORS
From the demand side, quality education translates into graduates who are employable and have adequate skills to deliver to the needs of corporate India. Be it doctors, engineers, or even MBA graduates, there is a dearth of quality professionals in India. This is precisely why every year corporates like Infosys (service), ITC (manufactured consumer items), Apollo (medical), and L&T (engineering), to name a few, are left with vacant seats, or prefer to recruit people with foreign degrees, rather than employ graduates from India. Yes, there are quality education institutes such as IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc. in India. However, the number of pass-outs from these institutes are either too few in number, or decide to go abroad for higher studies, or even take up work there.
From the supply side, quality of education would be seen in terms of contribution to research and development. This means — education institutes serving as an incubator for developing new technologies that can be of use to the entrepreneurs, to produce goods and services more efficiently. This becomes evident from the number of patents, and research articles, published from universities and colleges. Although there has been an increase in the number of patents applied and research articles published from India, it is far less compared with the more advanced economies.
It is to be noted, per-capita income of any country can be increased either by increase in labour force participation and/or because of technological breakthroughs. The growth performance of the newly industrialised economies in Asia, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, is typically driven by designing curriculum, so that more people can be employed. This model of increasing growth by producing more employable graduates, implies that growth has taken place through increase in labour force participation. On the other hand, the growth process in the West is attributed to technological innovation.
India faces a dearth of both quality teachers and quality education institutes. At a time when deans of Indian origin at Ivy league business schools in the US are making national headlines, in India, the newly-opened IIMs and IITs are scouting for professors. In fact, these newly-opened institutes survive by hiring visiting professors from other institutes and universities in India.
BRAIN DRAIN
A majority of the quality students regard education as they would any other commodity. Pursuing quality education comes with a cost. For example, many MBA students who take bank loans look at education as a return on their investment, that is, the jobs they are likely to get once they get their degree. In that way, most education institutes, especially the MBA ones, have now been transformed into sophisticated placement agencies. If the institutes cannot secure jobs, they are likely to get fewer students.
The preference for IITs and IIMs derives from the fact that the perceived returns from education in these institutes are highest here. Corporates come to IIMs and IITs, not by taking into consideration the patents and research articles published, but by being persuaded that the rigorous screening procedure in these institutes are assurance enough that quality students get in.
During a slowdown, the second-tier institutes provide more value for money for students and corporates. No matter what the business school teaches, the corporates have their own induction programme. During a slowdown, a corporate can hire students at a lower cost, compared with what it would have to offer to tier-1 graduates. Hence, in recent times, some of the IIMs faced difficulties, while second-rung business schools were able to achieve 100 per cent placement.
The other smaller group of quality students who are indeed passionate about pursuing, and not consuming education, typically leaves for the US, Australia or Western Europe, to pursue higher education. Recent evidence also suggests that because of want of adequate seats in medical colleges, students are actually going to the erstwhile Soviet Union, and even learning medicine in their local languages. Net result: India still loses out in terms of brain drain, because of adequate quality education facilities at home.
STIFLING REGULATIONS
Government regulation in higher education hinders supply of quality education. It is all-pervading, whether in terms of determining fees to be charged, or foreign collaboration. When it requires around Rs 6 lakh per year to produce an engineer, and anything between Rs 10-12 lakh per year to produce a doctor, asking a private institute to charge state-determined fees is unreasonable. In this fashion, the privately funded universities cannot survive, leaving aside, hiring quality teachers.
What is however do-able is asking the privately-run institutes to give scholarships to the needy, meritorious students. In fact, most of the successful universities in the US are privately-run. Most of the business schools in China are thriving, and provide a better education because of their collaboration with Universities in the US and Canada — something that isn't possible in India. To open any private institute, no-objection certificates need to be taken from multiple sources, such as the State government, State universities, and government regulatory bodies (for example, UGC, AICTE, etc.), instead of having a single-window clearance mechanism in place.
The government will do better by putting a grievance redressal mechanism in place, where the universities can be tried, or their license cancelled in the event of false promises. In the event of healthy competition, bogus education institutes won't be able to survive. So, let the students decide. Hopefully, this will add to supply of quality education institutes, human capital, and help to sustain India's growth.
(The author is Associate Professor, Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai.)

On December 12, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted Recommendation Rec (2012)13 on ensuring quality education. The Recommendation and its Explanatory Memorandumoutline the Council of Europe’s understanding of quality education, link the concept to the multiple purposes of education and consider the roles and responsibilities of public authorities for ensuring quality education at various levels of education. The texts were prepared by the Steering Committee for Educational Policy and Practice (CDPPE).
See also The Committee of Ministers adopt Recommendation on Quality Education - Higher Education.

On Thursday, senior executives from the boards were grilled by the Commons education select committee. The Conservative chairman of the committee, Graham Stuart commended the Telegraph for carrying out a "public service in exposing the actions of some very senior examiners". He said the stories were "shocking and suggest there may be a need for radical changes". The education secretary, Michael Gove is conducting his own enquiry. It is striking how quick even the most ardent advocates market forces are to condemn, when competition shows its seamy side.
At the same time, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) published the new UK Quality Code for Higher Education. The director of research, development and partnerships at the QAA, Jayne Mitchell explained: "We have worked with students and academic colleagues to identify the principles on which institutions should base the standard of their academic awards, the quality of their teaching, learning and assessment, and the information they make available. For the first time, we're including a set of Expectations that all UK higher education providers are required to meet."
I find the language quite interesting. How can one be required to meet an expectation? In my mind, expectation is more easily linked with hope than any sort of mandatory requirement. I confess these doubts had been planted on Wednesday by a lecture from Roger Brown, the professor of HE policy at Liverpool Hope University. He questions how binding the new code will be on universities, as he says: "Under existing UK law, institutions with degree awarding powers alone have the right to determine the conditions associated with their awards."
He contrasts the tough language of "requirements" with the far more mutable tone in the introduction of the new code which says: "The Quality Code gives individual higher education providers, who are independent and self-governing, a shared starting point for setting, describing and maintaining the academic standards of their higher education programmes and awards and for assuring the quality of the learning opportunities they provide for students. "This makes it possible to ensure that higher education provision and outcomes are comparable and consistent at a threshold level across the UK" (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2011b: 3).
Professor Brown takes issue with the government's faith that greater market forces in HE will raise academic standards, which he suggests is "nonsense on stilts". He argues that there is a contradiction between the quality assurance system which is based on shared principles and mutual professional trust and the market where competition and supposedly informed consumer choices are expected to drive improvements. Without binding quality assurance, there is a risk that consumer power will lower standards rather than raise them. It will be more difficult to fail students who have paid £27,000 for a degree. There are also flaws in the idea that students will hold universities to public account for their failings. It's not in the student's interests to undermine the brand or reputation of the institution they have invested so much to attend.
Years ago, I interviewed students about the NSS. I was struck by the testimony of several who said that although they were unhappy with the standard of teaching and assessment, they had not marked their university down in the survey because this could lower the value of their degrees to the outside world. There is a resonance in professor Brown's warning. Perhaps we should remember the fall of Barings Bank and how inadequate the cosy assumption of "gentleman's agreements" proved after the big bang.

Mapping the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance: Draft report now open for public consultation. The E4 Group of higher education stakeholders (EUA, ENQA, ESU and EURASHE), has been carrying out a project to map the application and implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESGs).
As authors of the ESG, published in 2005 in the framework of the Bologna Process, the E4’s project aims to identify whether these guidelines still “meet the current challenges of higher education”, and therefore if they need updating or revising. After a period of information gathering and consultation with members of the E4 associations, the project steering group has now published a draft report for public consultation.
The report outlines in detail the background to the EC-supported MAP-ESG project and how each of the four associations consulted with their members and carried out research. EUA’s consultation included a survey carried out with its 34 national rectors’ conferences, and a series of workshops enabling universities to benchmark their QA processes against the ESGs, and to share their experiences of good practice as well as obstacles encountered in implementing these processes. Following a call for interest, 49 delegates from 23 European countries participated in the workshops, thus contributing to a thorough discussion on how the ESGs have been implemented and applied in institutional contexts. The outcomes of this work and the report will also be discussed by EUA Council at its meeting on Friday 21 October.
The report tackles a variety of issues relating to the ESGs (at the national, institutional and QA agency level), including their purpose and scope, clarity and usability, and impact and implementation.
It underlines that while the ESGs have proved to be a “major achievement of the Bologna Process”, and are “well regarded by all stakeholders” and have “facilitated a shared understanding of QA”, there are a number of areas for improvement. The draft report finishes with a tentative recommendation on further action that would be presented to the Ministers of the EHEA countries in spring 2012. The full draft report is now available on the ENQA website and will be open for public consultation until 11 November 2011. The findings of this work will then be presented at a conference in Denmark with the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG) in January 2012 and the final report and recommendation will be presented at the next meeting of Higher Education Ministers in Bucharest in April 2012.