Butlletí

A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya

93

April 2019

EDITORIAL

The foundations of a Quality Assurance Agency

The Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) are a set of standards and guidelines used by institutions and higher education quality assurance (QA) agencies in Europe as a reference document for internal and external quality assurance systems in higher education. Part 3 of the ESG sets out the seven standards and guidelines for external QA agencies. If I personally had to choose what I consider to be the foundations of a QA agency from these seven standards, the main ones would be:

• Independence. Agencies should be independent and act autonomously. They should have full responsibility for their operations and the outcomes of those operations without third party influence. Independence is important to ensure that procedures and decisions are solely based on expertise.
• Professional conduct. High professional standards and integrity in the agency’s work are indispensable. For this reason, all persons involved in its activities must be competent and act professionally and ethically.
• Activities, policy and processes for quality assurance. Agencies should have clear and explicit goals and objectives that are part of their publicly available mission statement.

AQU NEWS

• INQAAHE General Assembly 201929.03.2019
• INQAAHE 15th Biennial Conference26.03.2019
• Analysis of the round table-workshop: Professional skills of the future in Catalonia - Industry20.03.2019
• To make an informed decision on your future, consult EUC Estudis website and the course feedback template of the degree course you are interested in19.03.2019
• Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Barcelona (UB), the first department to be awarded the quality label for research18.03.2019
• Conclusions and proposals for improving university-level education in the field of Tourism15.03.2019
• Start of the participatory process of AQU Catalunya's Strategic Plan for 2019-202214.03.2019
• AQU Catalunya participates in the 2019 International Conference on Open, Distance and Networked Education (nextED) 04.03.2019
• Latest version of the report for temporary contract teaching staff under the Serra Húnter Plan20.02.2019
• AQU Catalunya at the “2nd TeSLA International Event”18.02.2019
• AQU Catalunya takes part in the In-forma't campaign13.02.2019
• Conclusions and proposals for the improvement and enhancement of university education in the field of communication11.02.2019
• Processing and resolution completed of all applications received in 2018 for evaluation for six-year research quality premiums05.02.2019
• New developments in programme accreditation31.01.2019
• TeSLA project: summary of the last quarter of 201828.01.2019
• Conclusions and proposals for the improvement of university education in the field of public administration25.01.2019
• The employment outcomes of master's graduates just released on EUC Dades23.01.2019
• In a pioneering measure in Europe, all degree programmes at Catalan universities to include the gender perspective from the 2020-2021 academic year onwards21.01.2019
• Publication of the Agency's Action Plan for 201918.01.2019
• The results of the first call for applications in 2018 for the assessment of research and advanced research have been released11.01.2019
• AQU Catalunya participates in the National Pact for the Knowledge Society10.01.2019
• Results of the first call for applications in 2018 for the assessment of tenure-eligible teaching staff (lecturer category)04.01.2019

ARTICLES

• AQU Catalunya Strategic Plan 2019-2022
  AQU Catalunya's Strategic Plan for 2015-2018 was developed in a participatory manner, with the experience gained from complying with and fulfilling the previous plan and the application of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). The plan sets out the Agency's six main strategic lines of action below, the details of which are specified in AQU Catalunya's annual Action Plan.
  Editorial Departmen
• The new AQU Catalunya Code of Ethics
  The new Code of Ethics of the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya/AQU Catalunya) was endorsed by AQU Catalunya's Governing Board at its meeting on 2 May 2019.
  
  The working group commissioned with the drafting of the Code of Ethics consisted of Dr. Esther Giménez-Salinas, Professor Emeritus of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Ramon Llull University, Dr. Begoña Román, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, and Dr. Marina Garcés, Associate Professor of Studies in Arts and Humanities at the Open University of Catalonia. The secretary to the working group was Jordi Escolar, legal adviser to AQU Catalunya and secretary of the Appeals Committee.
  Jordi Escolar - Legal advisor
• The fourth graduate Satisfaction survey
  The latest figures on the satisfaction of graduates from universities in Catalonia, which include the 2016, 2017 and 2018 cohorts, have recently been released. The fieldwork was carried out this winter (2018/2019) and, for the first time, all twelve universities in the higher education system in Catalonia participated in the survey. Another important development was that 34 affiliated schools and institutes (out of a total of 50) also took part, with the satisfaction survey becoming increasingly consolidated as a comparable and useful instrument that is common to the higher education system as a whole. 88% of the graduate population from these cohorts were covered by the study.
  Dani Torrents - Senior advisor, Internationalisation and Knowledge Generation Department

OPINION

• AQU Catalunya's new Code of Ethics: an opportunity
  

  Esther Giménez-Salinas
  Director, Chair of Social and Restorative Justice, Pere Tarrés Foundation, Ramon Llull University (URL)

  As a lawyer and an expert in criminal law, I have been trained in the principles that regulate certain types of behaviour and protect what are considered to be certain fundamental legal assets that, if they are not respected, result in the punishment of whoever infringes the rules and/or regulations. When the first codes of ethics appeared they proved to be overly similar to laws and regulations in that they attempted to regulate certain types of behaviour to the point of case-based reasoning, or casuistry. This was in part due to the fact that applied ethics as a discipline was still underdeveloped in Spain.
  
  In the 1970s a new discipline in the field of ethics, known as applied ethics, appeared in the US. As the name indicates, it was a movement linked to specific situations that arose as a result of the need to deal with real-world actions (and their moral considerations) in professional practice that are not necessarily governed by law.
  
  Bioethics is probably one of the more well-known fields in this discipline as it is directly linked to specific situations in the field of health in which many people have found themselves faced either directly or indirectly with ethical dilemmas. By now, however, it has spread to all professional sectors, ranging from private enterprise to public service.

AQU RECOMMENDS

• Bologna with student eyes 2018. The final countdown
• The European Higher Education Area in 2018. Bologna Process Implementation Report
• Study to evaluate the progress on quality assurance systems in the area of higher education in the Member States and on cooperation activities at European level
• The Observatorio de Empleabilidad y Empleo Universitarios' barometer of master's degrees