Call for students to join ESU Quality Assurance Student Experts Pool for the membership term 2026/2027

The Steering Committee of the ESU QA Student Experts Pool hereby opens a
call for 90-100 members to join ESU QA Student Experts Pool for the
membership term 2026/2027. All applications must be submitted by the
26th of July, 2026 at 23:59 CEST (prolonged deadline), by filling out the
following application form.
The ESU’s Quality Assurance Student Experts’ Pool has been established to
promote student engagement in quality assurance and to contribute to the
improvement of higher education provision in the European Higher
Education Area. It aims to develop ESU as a crucial partner for quality
assurance agencies in Europe and to play a leading role in quality
assurance policy developments.
For these purposes, members of the pool are trained and can be nominated
to participate in quality assurance procedures, e.g., reviews, thus promoting
student participation in quality assurance processes across Europe.
Through the pool, ESU also undertakes capacity-building and development
activities in quality assurance in higher education on the national level, in
cooperation with the National Students’ Union members of ESU.
During the past years, ESU has organised several training sessions at the
European level. So far, ESU has nominated an increasing number of students
to take part in various international external evaluations organised by
different quality assurance agencies all over Europe. Furthermore, ESU is
cooperating with the Institutional Evaluation Programme of the European
University Association (EUA) and is nominating students for external reviews
of quality assurance agencies for the purposes of determining membership
in the European Association of Quality Assurance (ENQA) and/or inclusion in
the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR).

Benefits of being a member of QA Pool:

• learning about European higher education;
• possibility to be involved in quality assurance processes at a programme, institutional, appellate, national, and international level (e.g. evaluations of institutions and quality assurance agencies);
• possibility to participate in quality assurance governing bodies, such as in those of quality assurance agencies;
• receiving regular updates about the newest developments in the field of quality assurance;
• opportunities to attend external quality assurance events;
• possibilities for networking with other people interested in the topic of quality assurance;
• opportunities to participate in specially designed pieces of training for experts;
• opportunities to develop transferable skills, such as communication skills, peer assessment, etc.

Tasks and responsibilities that can be expected from ESU QA Pool member:

• Share knowledge and experience in quality assurance;
• Discuss topics in quality assurance and/or student involvement;
• Identify themselves as members of ESU’s QA Student Experts Pool;
• Act as multiplier agents in their respective countries;
• Promote the ESU’s QA Student Experts’ Pool;
• Disseminate articles and other documents related to quality assurance among student experts in QA at the national and international level;
• Inform the Pool about any quality assurance-related events at the international level;
• Give feedback on reports, ESU policy papers, or similar documents;
• Provide feedback about reviews, pieces of training and conferences to the Steering Committee of ESU’s QA Student Experts Pool;
• Enhance student participation in quality assurance in higher education;

Selection:

In the selection process, we aim to ensure an adequate balance of
participants by country and region in the European Higher Education Area,
study field, level of study and type of higher education, as well as a balance
of participants of each gender, according to ESU’s Gender Mainstreaming
Strategy.
Current members of the pool are invited to apply as well if they wish to
continue their membership in the pool.

Criteria for Selection:

• Registered higher education student (at any level) or recently graduated (within 1 year) – only if continuing membership;
• Previous experience in various levels of quality assurance in higher education, especially participation in reviews or review-like activities;
• Demonstration of motivation to join the ESU QA Pool and contribute to promoting student participation in Quality Assurance of higher education;
• Experience in student representation;
• Excellent command of English;
• Experience in higher education policies,
• Students who are not employed by Quality Assurance agencies, by national/regional institutions related to quality assurance, are not part of the management of Higher Education Institutions, do not hold an academic position at HEIs (besides the teaching required within the PhD programmes), or any other position creating conflict of interest ).1

Looked upon favourably:

• Letter of support from Member NUSs;
• Certificates of participation in different QA-related events and educational activities, letters of recommendation from QA agencies or other institutions involved in QA;
• Membership in national QA Pools;
• Ability to work in languages other than English.

Documentation for submission2:

• Completed application form;
• Recent CV in the Europass format (maximum 5 pages);
• Proof of enrolment or recent graduation;
• Maximum 3 minutes video via Google drive, Youtube, etc. open access link giving us insights about your motivation to join the ESU QA Pool;
• Description of employment-studies relationship (only for PhD students, IF APPLICABLE.

For any queries, you can reach us at qapoolsc@esu-online.org.
Responsible persons for this call are Tamara Ciobanu, Gaga Gvenetadze
and Mick Scholtka on behalf of the Steering Committee of the ESU QA Pool,
and Urszula Lis and Daciana Pop on behalf of the ESU Executive Committee.
For all those student experts that will be selected we are planning an online
welcome training session that is mandatory for the admission to the Pool.
We will be able to provide further details to the selected applicants once the
call is closed.

Kind regards,
The Steering Committee of the ESU QA Pool.

1. Regarding this criteria, we are asking all students to declare their employment status and their position at the University (in case of PhD students). Note that we will not accept any applications from those students who have dual roles: as students and full-time teaching staff members at higher education institutions. Please refer to the Annex to this call for further explanation.
2. See Annex to this call for further explanation.

Annex to the Call for students to join ESU Quality Assurance Student Experts Pool for the membership term 2026/2027

This Annex provides guidelines for the application to the Call. All late or
incomplete applications will be disregarded. Every person applying is
responsible for the content of their application and making sure that their
levels of education, employment or other engagement is declared as
clearly as possible, as it could lead to later misinterpretation and the
inability of the student to be admitted to the Pool. In order to avoid this, we
hope you will find these guidelines useful.
All the submitted documents (aside from the video) need to be in the PDF
format. No hand-written documents or documents in other formats will be
accepted (unless agreed upon prior to the application with the Steering
Committee).
Remember to align your National Qualifications Framework (NQF) levels with
the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), as that is the one we use in
order to assess the applications.
Below you can find suggestions on each of the criteria to be assessed.

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

When submitting your CV, have in mind the many applications we have to
assess and try to be concise and QA-specific. Our Pool members and Pool
member applicants are usually all high achieving students, involved in
many extracurricular activities, however, when assessing the admittance to
the Pool, we focus on your QA interest and background, while we tend not to
take as much into consideration your other extracurricular activities.

Do	Don’t
Mention your complete study background, employment background/experience.	Enter the volunteering activities or short-cycle courses in the CV under employment or your study background, as it can be confusing.
Mention all your previous QA experience, and sort it according to the level of engagement (IQA, EQA, Agency reviews).	Mention broad experience in your motivation, without listing the QA activities you participated in within your CV.
Mention any other relevant type of QA activities you participated in (national student QA pool, QA-related events).	Try to list every single engagement you did in terms of QA (i.e. participated in 5 meetings of the school QA board).
Mention if you have experience working within your national, or any other Pool of experts.	Mention that you worked for different agencies for which you have conducted a review, because this is a temporary contract and it can be considered a conflict of interest (remember that being a reviewer is not the same as working on a contract for an agency).
Be very specific about your student status and your employment, and try to elaborate on this in your motivation.	Mention just your higher education institution and the study year (i.e. 5th year of bachelor studies), or the broad employment status (i.e. Ministry consultant) as this will cause confusion and it could provide a technical reason for rejecting your application.

Proof of enrolment

Your proof of enrolment needs to be issued officially by your institution, and
should not be any kind of letter written by a mentor, administrative officer
etc. In cases in which the student has graduated, you need to submit your
In cases in which the student has currently frozen
their studies, they need to inform the Steering Committee of the ESU QA Pool
of that, and they could provide an alternative proof if the official one cannot
be attained.
In case you have graduated, but you expect to continue your studies, please
mention this in the motivation of your application.
For all the documents submitted in their original language, a translation to
one of these languages needs to be provided (the translation can be
self-made).
For all the documents submitted in a different alphabet, a translation to the
Latin alphabet needs to be provided (the translation can be self-made).

Motivation – Video

Your video serves as a complimentary part of your application for
demonstrating your motivation, your strengths and for further clarification
of your CV and background. No unrelated information should be given
through it.
The video serves to assess your understanding of the English language as
well, so don’t feel shy and show us how well you would function in the
external panels we nominate you for.

The points you ideally have to clarify further on in your motivation are:

• Your student status and study level, as well as your plans for the future (in relation to your studies); –
• Your employment status and whether it is related to your studies;
• Your QA experiences and how joining ESU’s QA Pool would compliment that;
• Your personal interests and availability during the membership term;
• Your membership in other QA-related bodies;
• Your strengths and participation in student representation (even in ESU), etc.

Video is a preferred motivation format, and the Steering Committee shall
allow the written format in exceptional cases (if it’s not possible for you to
record a video due to accessibility reasons). The video can be
amateurly-made, simply with your cell-phone, your laptop camera etc., just
make sure that your face is visible, that the video is not dark, and that your
voice can be heard well.

Additional documents

The letters of support are generally considered good, as it means that the
student was either involved in a student movement on a
national/international level, which could be a useful skill in the development
of the Pool. The support letters are not obligatory though, and we expect
that the majority of applicants will not provide them, which poses no barrier
to their application.

If you happen to speak any other languages, this would be beneficial,
however, make sure to mention only those languages in which you are
comfortable conversing or understanding the language to a higher level. In
cases in which multiple languages are similar and you can understand
them (i.e. Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian), you can mention the
language you know best and mention the other languages in the brackets.

Information for PhD students

As mentioned in the Call, PhDs need to demonstrate that their student
status is undisputable. The Steering Committee is aware of the specificity of
the PhD studies, and the many differences in their organisation throughout
EHEA, and we depend on the clarifications from the students themselves in
order to assess their candidacies.
As many PhD students are employed at their respective higher education
institutions and they teach, it is important to understand the distinction
between a few specific roles:

1. Teaching assistant: a person “in training” who can have a teaching responsibility, but is not a full-time employee at the University, but their employment is related to the PhD studies. If this person would quit the PhD, their contract would be terminated.
2. Assistant professor: A permanent teaching position unrelated to the PhD studies. A PhD student could parallelly be an assistant professor and a PhD student, but their interruption of the PhD studies would not affect their employment.
3. Lecturer: A person who works, either full-time, or part-time, as a teacher in higher education institutions, and this employment makes them a staff member at their institution. Aside from being a lecturer, a person can attend PhD studies. If this person would quit the PhD, their contract as a lecturer would not be affected.
4. Researcher: A person who works, either full-time, or part-time, as a researcher in any educational institution (primary, secondary or tertiary level education) or elsewhere, and this employment makes them a staff member at their institution. Aside from being a researcher, a person can attend PhD studies. If this person would quit the PhD, their contract as a researcher would not be affected.
5. Associate Researcher: A person who works as a researcher in any educational institution (primary, secondary or tertiary level education) or elsewhere, and this employment makes them a staff member at their institution. Aside from being a researcher, a person can attend PhD studies. If this person would quit the PhD, their contract as a researcher would be terminated.
6. Full time PhD student: a PhD student under no contractual agreement with the higher education institution, or under an agreement that does not involve a PhD student being a member of the teaching staff or participating in teaching activities.

Be aware that the categories I-VI might not exist under these terms in your
country, but in order to standardise and appropriately categorise PhD
students, these terms will be applied throughout your engagement in ESU’s
QA Pool. Choose that category you most closely fit into. If you do not find
yourself fitting any of the categories, reach to the Steering Committee
directly and consult prior to submitting your application.

Please note that all of these categories of students can be admitted to the
ESU QA Pool, but only those pertaining to the category I., V. or VI. will be
able to apply and be considered for the Calls as student experts (unless
specific conditions apply). The same applies to those students (regardless
of their study levels) employed by Quality Assurance agencies, by
national/regional institutions related to quality assurance, are part of the management of Higher Education Institutions, or any other position creating
conflict of interest.

We encourage the PhD students to provide the Steering Committee of the
ESU QA Pool with the inserts from their employment contract (if possible), if
they are employed with any of the higher education stakeholders. The
inserts should contain the description of their responsibilities as PhD
students pertaining to their employment (i.e. hold classes, organise lectures,
independently conduct research), but they must never contain any
confidential information. If the contract is considered fully confidential,
please provide us with the description of the work-study related
connections.If uncertain of how to define your PhD course in terms of employment and
studies, reach out directly to the Steering Committee, up to 5 work-days
before the deadline for applications, so that the Steering Committee would
have enough time to research and get back to you regarding this.