Creating quality assurance and international transparency for Quality Assurance Agencies: the case of mutual recognition

Abstract

The paper presents the experiences gained in the pilot project on mutual recognition conducted by the quality assurance agencies in the Nordic countries and the future perspective for international quality assurance of national quality assurance agencies. The background of the project was the need, on the one hand, to advance internationalisation of quality assurance of higher education, and on the other hand, allow for the differences in the national approaches to quality assurance. The paper will focus on two issues: first, the strength and weaknesses of the method employed and of the use of the ENQA‐membership provision as a basis for the evaluative procedure; and second, the pros and cons of using mutual recognition as international evaluative procedure compared with other approaches.

Notes

Professor David Dill and consultant Sami Kanaan kindly accepted the responsibility. The working group's experiences and reflections concerning the project have been published as an ENQA Occasional Paper together with the external experts' contributions and annexes (Kristoffersen & Lindeberg, 2002).