Talk of the town

Extract from article, written by Magalie Soenen, Chiara Finocchietti and Jonna Korhonen:

Quality assurance

Looking at micro-credentials from the perspective of quality assurance in line with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG), the primary responsibility for the quality of provision lies with the higher education institutions.

The focus of external quality assurance should be on the institutional approach to micro-credentials and their explicit inclusion in existing or new processes so that they are fit-for-purpose and so that we avoid overburdening institutions.

The ESG applies to all higher education offered in the EHEA, in whatever format or mode of delivery and for whatever duration. A register of trustworthy providers could be a useful tool for supporting the acceptance and recognition of micro-credentials. Existing registers could be extended or new registers could be established at a national and regional level. At the European level, the DEQAR database could serve that purpose since its scope is to cover all providers and provision aligned with the ESG.

Link to the full article

Extract from article:
“The 60 000 quality assurance reports (and decisions) in DEQAR (from 42 of the 50 registered agencies) provide a comprehensive system-level view of the external quality assurance activities in 85% of the EHEA member countries. The combined DEQAR and ETER datasets provide an extensive picture on the coverage of reviewed higher education institutions and their student population.

While the DEQAR external quality assurance coverage is not complete for all higher institution systems, the existing data shows that at least 50% of higher education institutions in 23 countries have been reviewed at the programme or institutional level by an EQAR-registered agency. Of the 2 948 higher education institutions found in ETER, 46.4% have been reviewed at the programme or institutional level against the ESG. In both datasets, a nearly identical percentage of student population coverage of the reviewed higher education institutions is observed: 46.6%.”

Link to the full article

The ETER newsletter promotes the DEQAR CONNECT Policy Brief that uses both DEQAR and ETER data “External quality assurance frameworks and their alignment with the ESG”.

The Policy Brief investigates the extent of Quality Assurance practices in different countries. Specifically, by combining data from DEQAR and ETER, countries can be compared as of the share of HEIs in ETER and the respective share of enrolled students covered by Quality Assurance (QA). More about the Policy Brief here.

Link to the ETER newsletter

The newsletter article of the French ENIC-NARIC starts with a brief introduction of EQAR and DEQAR “European cooperation focused on quality assurance“, followed by an short overview of the DEQAR CONNECT project and its partners “an ambitious project to reinforce cooperation” and concludes by describing the ENIC-NARIC integration “a new phase that will benefit the automatic recognition of qualifications“.

Link to full article (in French)

The DEQAR CONNECT project’s objectives are described, listing all project partners. EQAR and the DEQAR project are also mentioned and there is a quote from CTI:

« L’objectif est de disposer d’une base de données européenne unique qui permet la transparence et la reconnaissance des formations évaluées par des agences dont les pratiques sont conformes aux ESG », précise la CTI.

Link to article n° 187117  (in French)

Digital Student data & Recognition
DEQAR is mentioned several times in this study (page 6, 12, 26 and 35). The DigiRec project explored the connection between digitization of student data and the fair and smooth recognition of foreign qualifications. The result is a White Paper for the ENIC-NARIC networks that serves three purposes:

• create a broader understanding in the networks about the effects of digitization on their work;
• offer new policy perspectives, practical recommendations and guidelines;
• support individual centres and the networks to develop policies.

Extract from the paper:

“The European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) developed a database called ‘DEQAR’ that includes all external quality assurance results by registered agencies, based on agreed EHEA quality assurance standards, the ESG. DEQAR provides an application programming interface (API) that allows you to feed this data directly into your local application or system. As a recognition office or information centre (ENIC-NARIC) you may use the API to embed a search into your workflow to verify accreditation/evaluation status of an institution or study programme. In doing so, you can automate part of your search related to the quality. This is currently piloted by four ENIC-NARICs as part of the DEQAR CONNECT project. DEQAR data is public and freely accessible for anybody free of charge, but EQAR reserves the right publish a list of registered users for transparency reasons. More information is available via the https://www.eqar.eu/qa-results/get-data/connect-to-api/ website.”

Link to the White Paper

Short newsitem (in German) about DEQAR and how Darmstadt University features in the database.

Extract from the article (translated from German into English):

“DEQAR makes available reports from external quality assurance procedures, carried out by recognised European quality assurance agencies. It is thus a useful tool for everyone who needs information on degrees, study programmes and higher education institutions across the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).”

Link to the newsletter (in German).

Aragón Universidad is a regional online and paper magazine for higher education, widely distributed among institutions and stakeholders.

Extract from the article (translated from Spanish into English):

ACPUA participates and has, together with other agencies, uploaded data in this tool which allows you to find the external quality assurance results (e.g. evaluation and accreditation reports and decisions) of more than 2000 universities worldwide. DEQAR consists of search functions per country, per city and per institution and thus enables each and every citizen to easily and quickly have information at their disposal about a study programme or university.

Maru Diaz, the regional Minister for Higher Education in Aragon defined DEQAR as “a trip advisor where, with one click, students, professors and researchers can find everything they look for in order to make well-informed decisions.”

Link to the full article (in Spanish)

Extract from interview:

CT: EQAR used to provide a list of trustworthy agencies, with basic information on their work. But understandably, most people are interested in the quality of a higher education institution or study programme, rather than information on an agency as such.

But to read actual reports and decisions on higher education institutions or programmes you had to visit the agencies’ own websites. This is not an easy task with 46 agencies: you had to find out which agency might have reported on the institution or programme you are interested in (in many countries several agencies carry out evaluation or accreditation) and then had to navigate differently structured websites in different languages. In a survey we did, a clear majority of respondents told us that they found reports only “somewhat accessible”.

Especially now that European ministers have set out to realise automatic recognition of qualifications, different users – and not only experts – will need a simple way to see that a higher education institution or programme was quality assured in line with the ESG. 

With DEQAR we try to create one pan-European database of quality assurance reports and decisions to make them more easily accessible and understandable. Our aim is to create a one-stop shop for all external quality assurance in line with the ESG, carried out by the EQAR-registered agencies.

Link to the full article

Extract from article:
“One key use of quality assurance reports is in the recognition of qualifications or periods of study. Recognition officers, in national information centres (ENIC-NARICs) and higher education institutions, need a quick and clear way to find out if an institution underwent external quality assurance in line with the ESG. Especially if quality assurance intends to catalyse the automatic recognition of qualifications, more organisations and individuals will need a way to easily establish this themselves, without a lengthy search or process. There are plenty of other situations in which external quality assurance results are consulted.”

Link to the full article

Extract from article”
“DEQAR already includes 9 737 on 1 624 higher education institutions from 56 countries. For 12 EHEA countries, DEQAR covers all or most higher education institutions. Country profiles for each EHEA country are embedded to contextualise the information on QA reports. It is expected that DEQAR will grow to 20 000 reports by the end of 2019. 

In addition to many European partners, DEQAR also includes reports on higher education institutions from 4Asian partners in the ASEM Education Process: a couple of universities in Australia, China, Indonesia and Mongolia were evaluated or accredited by EQAR-registered agencies.”

Link to the full article

Extract from article:
“Supporting student mobility: it goes without saying that the enormous growth in mobility of students is one of the great accomplishments of this European initiative. To support mobility across Europe, to enhance trust in our higher education systems and to make automatic recognition of degrees a reality, we are currently working towards establishing a database of higher education institutions and programmes which have been externally reviewed against the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). The database is an important milestone in achieving our goals and in building a European community of trust and transparency.”

Link to the full article

Extract from article:
“DEQAR (Database of External Quality Assurance Results), in which all accreditation decisions and reports by EQAR-registered agencies will be gathered and published. This database consists of information presented by trustworthy agencies complying with the ESG. This is to say that students can trust this information and use it to make well-informed choices. For countries and HEIs, this tool aims to ease the re-cognition procedures. That is why DE-QAR has led to great enthusiasm with students and governments. At the end of 2019, DEQAR is expected to provide ac-cess to over 20.000 reports and decisions on HEIs and study programmes!”

Link to the full article

This review is based on the visit of DEQAR’s website as developed and accessible in its public preview on 22 and 23 March 2019 and uses as criteria its transparency and the quality of the amount of public information already collected, the accessibility and research features as well as the comparability of its data. The remarks as user are purely personal and not as representative of one of its identified users’ categories.
Conclusions (extract from the review):
“… The most added value of DEQAR is that the information is international, trustworthy and complete and that it can be researched at one place by some clicks. The fact that this database is managed and controlled by EQAR, being the only independent Bologna organisation existing, but in close collaboration with all the stakeholders, is an important victory. Hopefully the information will extend to the whole EHEA. The information is easily accessible and the research is user friendly. The information is important for all stakeholders of HE, but will primarily be used for reasons of recognition (ENIC-NARIC), for reasons of information about national EQA systems (QAAs and national authorities), the EQA status of HEIs and/or study programmes (HEIs’ strategic partner search and recognition of mobility and students’ enrolment and/or mobility choices). While DEQAR holds a lot of information, the information can and will be used less for reasons of comparison.”

Link to the full review