Recommendations published on supporting recognition through quality assurance
27 May 2019
The partners of the project ‘Linking academic recognition and quality assurance’ (LIREQA) have published recommendations on how fair and effective academic recognition practices can be supported through internal and external quality assurance.
Separate recommendations are aimed at higher education institutions, quality assurance agencies and ENIC-NARIC centres, as well as stakeholder networks.
EUA helped to shape the recommendations through participation in the project’s advisory board. Higher education institutions in particular are advised to ensure that there is an appropriate institutional infrastructure to deal with recognition issues, including a clear allocation of responsibilities, training for staff and availability of information; and to monitor these activities through the internal quality assurance system.
All stakeholders are called on to ensure recognition practices are based on the Lisbon Recognition Convention. There are also calls for the various actors involved in recognition to improve cooperation and communication in order to foster trust, transparency and sharing of good practice.
The LIREQA recommendations to institutions are also in line with previous recommendations issued by the ‘Focus on automatic institutional recognition’ (FAIR) project, which additionally called for institutions to establish adequate internal information systems and key performance indicators to facilitate recognition procedures.
EUA’s Tia Loukkola spoke at the LIREQA dissemination conference on 22 May 2019, highlighting the need for internal quality assurance systems to address recognition in an integrated way that does not create additional bureaucracy.
EUA continues to work on issues related to recognition, e.g. through its involvement in the Bologna Process Peer Support Group on the Lisbon Recognition Convention.
