A bimonthly publication of AQU Catalunya

51

November 2010

At the 10th anniversary meeting of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, the European quality assurance agencies presented 22 experiences of good practices in the external review of quality and agency management. Three of these were singled out by the leading authority for university quality at the European level, bearing in mind the degree to which they are applied:

A) QAA (UK) on the training of students in matters of university quality. This aspect is highly appraised by the different stakeholders in the British system in that reinforces the participation of students as co-producers in university education. 

B) NVAO (Netherlands) on the review and recognition of the level of internationalisation of programmes. The NVAO emphasised the motivation associated with this approach for reinforcing the position of Dutch universities and attracting talent from other countries.

C) ACSUCYL (Castilla y León/Spain), which has a system for surveying stakeholder satisfaction in relation to external quality review processes. Special mention was made of the agency’s work in the meta-assessment and the transparency of the results.

AQU Catalunya presented its experience in the Docentia programme to demonstrate the gain in responsibility and autonomy made by the universities in the field of academic staff assessment.

Among the functional agreements reached by the General Assembly was the transfer of the ENQA Secretariat from its customary headquarters in Helsinki to Brussels.