Increasing significance of external quality assurance in higher education: current strategies applied by European agencies

Abstract

[EN] Quality assurance of higher education programmes and institutions has been one of the cornerstones of the Bologna process since its creation. However, after more than one decade of implementation of the European quality assurance framework, many national systems are suffering from the so-called “evaluation fatigue”. From a thorough revision of key sectorial sources, this paper identifies a number of strategies currently being tested by European quality assurance agencies aimed at increasing significance and reducing bureaucracy of external quality assurance processes.