Impact evaluation from quality assurance agencies’ perspectives: methodological approaches, experiences and expectations

Abstract

Starting from the main objective of external quality assurance (EQA) procedures to assure and improve the quality of higher education institutions and its provisions, the paper examines expected impacts of EQA procedures on institutions from the perspectives of three European quality assurance agencies. First, the paper examines the expected impacts of different standard parts of a typical peer review procedure on higher education institutions and assesses when a procedure is most likely to have an effect on the institution. The second part presents the current practices of the three EQA agencies, AQU Catalunya (Spain), Evaluationsagentur Baden-Württemberg (evalag) (Germany) and the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (Finland) on assessing the impact of their EQA procedures.

Keywords:

• impact evaluation of external quality assurance
• impacts of peer review procedures
• impact assessment practices of quality assurance agencies in Finland, Germany and Spain

Acknowledgements

The authors did the work on this paper in the context of a project on impact analysis of external quality assurance in higher education institutions, which is co-funded by the European Commission (Grant no. 539481-LLP-1-2013-1-DE-ERASMUS-EIGF). This publication reflects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.