Sets of Standards for External Quality Assurance Agencies: A comparison

Abstract

The aim of quality assurance codes of practice and guidelines is, in theory, to give a clear indication to stakeholders, governments, financers, partners and the public at large about the various course providers and the level of education they offer. This paper compares six different quality assurance codes of practice and guidelines and uses the INQAAHE guidelines as a baseline. The paper investigates the extent to which there is a degree of transparency and comparability between the standards and criteria that are applied by the different networks. Overall, there appears to be considerable transparency and comparability between the codes of the major international networks of quality assurance agencies.

Keywords:

• Quality assurance
• codes of practice
• guidelines
• operational standards
• quality assurance agencies