Quality Assurance Fit forthe Future – Students’perspective

Despite emerging as an established mechanism within several Eu-ropean countries since the 90’s, the process of quality assurance in higher education has expanded as a commonality across all Europe as it was embraced by the Bologna Process since its early beginnings. The adoption of the first edition of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area in 2005 represented a cornerstone in European cooperation in higher education for several reasons: it was the first policy docu-ment adopted by ministers of higher education where the agen-cy was put in stakeholders (E4 – ENQA, EUA, EURASHE, ESU), which came with the proposal; it demonstrated that overarching, but also concrete commitments in national jurisdictions can be agreed upon; and it had created a coherent system with ingenious relations of cau-sality that would ensure its application: to be ‘recognised’, quality assurance agencies should comply with the ESGs, which in turn re-quires that they assess the compliance of HEIs against the ESGs (in most cases with effects regulated by national regulations in case of non-compliance), and finally also that the national framework for quality assurance is in line with the set of standards enacted by it.

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