Quality Assurance of European Universities alliances: Aligning Internal/External QA and Student Involvement
There are currently 44 European Universities alliances, which are all setting up their internal QA systems.
In the EUniQ project a European QA Framework for European Universities was developed which included in its principles the alignment between internal and external QA and an active involvement of students.
Four alliances (EUTOPIA, Una Europa, UNITE!, YUFE) participated as pilot projects in EUniQ to test the European QA Framework. The panels that evaluated these alliances included student members and interviewed student representatives. As these pilot evaluations were carried out at the start of the alliances the student involvement in QA was still limited and the internal QA processes were in the early stages. During the evaluation of the pilots several alliances and panel members posited that it would be beneficial to examine the progress made in the QA developments in a few years after the pilots. Therefore, the authors will conduct interviews with the main responsible actors for QA in the four alliances as well as with student representatives. To complement these perspectives from the pilots four other alliances will be interviewed as well, including at least two alliances from the second selection round. The following core questions will guide these interviews: what is the vision/strategy for developing and aligning the internal and external QA of the alliance; how has the QA system developed since the start of the alliance and which future steps are envisaged; how are students involved in the QA processes and how are students’ views taken into account?
This paper was presented at EQAF and reflects the views of the named authors only.
ISSN: 1375-3797
