Policy Briefs

One of the objectives of the DEQAR CONNECT project was to support the activities of the BFUG Thematic Peer Groups on Quality Assurance and on Recognition.

To that effect EQAR, with the support of the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER), committed to prepare policy briefs based on the analysis of the data collected through DEQAR. The policy briefs are Europe-wide, country specific and domain based reports on topics following Bologna Thematic Peer Groups’ priorities:

Legal frameworks for quality assurance (QA) and their alignment with the ESG
Implementation of the European Approach for QA of Joint Programmes
Cross-border quality assurance

The innovative aspect of these reports is that they are done by extracting, combining and then analysing two different datasets; DEQAR and of ETER. Together they form a veritable treasure cove of information, with ETER containing information on Higher Education Institutions in Europe (basic characteristics, educational activities, staff, finances and research activities etc.) and DEQAR the external QA results and reports of EQAR-registered agencies.

ESG Coverage of Higher Education Systems in Europe

The policy brief (published in May 2021) delves into external quality assurance frameworks and their alignment with the ESG.

Find out which countries have an external QA requirement at programme level, which at institutional level and which ones a combination of the two. The two different datasets (of ETER and DEQAR) together have helped provide an extensive picture on the coverage of higher education institutions and their student population by DEQAR.

The analysis also captures the diverse and evolving nature of external QA frameworks in Europe, reflecting on the aim and focus of such processes (at institutional and programme level), on the frequency of such procedures (validity of reports) and the commonalities and differences of higher education systems, illustrated by bubble plots.