59

March 2012

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OPINION

The Euro-Mediterranean area: a place of encounter for quality assurance agencies in southern Europe

Rafael Llavori de Micheo - ANECA and ENQA Board Member

The JISER-MED project (Joint Innovation & Synergies in Education and Research) was launched in January 2010. Coordinated by the University of Barcelona, the project forms part of the TEMPUS programme funded by the European Commission and involves higher education institutions (HEIs) and quality assurance (QA) agencies from the three regions that make up the Euro-Mediterranean area: the Maghreb, the Middle East and southern Europe.

The fundamental object of the project is to promote the mobility and employability of doctoral students within the Euro-Mediterranean area, with particular attention on the dimension of quality assurance across all three regions. In addition, JISER-MED has also served as a privileged place of encounter for university quality assurance agencies from higher education systems in southern Europe (Spain, Catalonia and France) whose institutions form part of the project.

The objective set out in the project for quality assurance is to identify and analyse existing internal quality assurance mechanisms in the participating universities and on which common elements can be established to facilitate the particular objectives of the project regarding mobility and employability, together with the recognition of periods of study spent abroad.

QA agencies find themselves in a situation where HEIs across the region are highly heterogeneous, ranging from those with highly formalised quality assurance systems in countries with defined QA models to others where there is a total absence of any kind of formal practice, either internal (in HEIs) or external (national).

The mapping of existing mechanisms at an institutional level for the countries participating in the project is thus in itself an evident collateral benefit of the project, which is to be carried out with a questionnaire aimed at a broad sample of HEIs in the three participating regions.

The project meetings have also served to establish a technical dialogue between QA agencies and HEIs in countries where there is no QA agency, which has helped to clarify the role they play in higher education systems in southern Europe, overcome a certain resistance to external review and promote reflection on external review by the authorities defined in each system.

With the actual project more than half way through, the initial assessment of JISER-MED so far is clearly positive in two very different ways:

  • It has promoted capacity building in countries without a formal internal or external quality assurance system.
  • The possibility of QA agencies in southern Europe to explore the definition of external QA criteria harmonised for the Euro-Mediterranean region.

The project has also contributed to the concurrence of a third collateral benefit, which was not foreseen in the planning, in that it facilitates closer networking between the participating QA agencies (ANECA, AQU Catalunya, AERES and AQUA Andorra), which has led them to rethink and adapt their own experiences in European networks to a broader and more diverse Mediterranean context.

Three of these agencies also contribute their standing as full members of ENQA, following their external review in compliance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). There are also many similarities between their academic traditions and legal contexts that are typically southern European and transcend the scope of the specific project and the particular geographical area of the Euro-Mediterranean region.

This sensitivity has led them to consider the setting up of a platform that brings together QA agencies in southern Europe, where matters of common interest can be dealt with within the context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) from a southern European perspective. The emphasis in this is not on creating new structures for quality and to add to the already over-populated acronyms map in Europe, but to provide a forum for the interpretation of the assurance of quality in higher education from a southern European perspective, in a sphere of activity where the balance of interpretations in the past has tended to tip towards the north.

Over and above any specific architecture that is agreed to and geographical limits set for this initiative over the coming months, it should nevertheless be celebrated as yet another example of the "biodiversity" of the EHEA within the sphere of quality assurance.

ENQA EQAR ISO

Generalitat de Catalunya

Via Laietana, 28, 5a planta 08003 Barcelona. Spain. Tel.: +34 93 268 89 50

© 2011 AQU Catalunya - Legal number B-21.910-2008