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Abstract
Accreditation is fast becoming the dominant method of evaluation used in the European Higher Education Area. This paper traces the political process supporting the introduction of this method in Europe and identifies different theoretical understandings and practices which shed light on how we can interpret the spread and role of accreditation in Europe, before discussing current trends in European and US accreditation, which could pave the way for a joint research agenda. In the conclusion, some possible implications of current developments are briefly presented.
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Notes
1. In Europe, even the Holy Sea has created its own external quality assurance agency (AVEPRO) (see ENQA Citation2008, 16). The 51 agencies are identified through their membership of ENQA. However, there may still exist agencies for external quality assurance in Europe that are not members of ENQA.
2. The so-called CRE-audits is an early example (Amaral Citation1998).
3. Among these countries was Denmark who in 2007 also implemented an accreditation scheme at the national level.
4. In the US context, a likely added bullet point would be to protect and strengthen institutional missions (Wolff Citation2005).
5. The same tendency can also be identified with respect to research evaluations (see Whitley and Gläser Citation2007).
6. The value of the federal student financial aid exceeds today $78 billion per year (Neal Citation2008, 26).
7. Accreditation is still not the central task for QAA. This agency conducts a variety of different evaluations.