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This article, using the example of Ukraine, aims to explore the time allocation of academics at university in a semi-peripheral state sustaining means–ends decoupling. Data emanate from the responses of 205 academics in business studies. The analysis uses degrees (qualifications) and gender as main categorizations. Findings indicate that means–ends decoupling at the state and university levels hinders academics from allocating their time to activities prescribed by the research university model, specifically, research and service.

Employing the Twenty Statements Test and a framework of self-motives (self-esteem, self-efficacy, authenticity), this paper examines the self-concept of Ukrainian doctoral students while means-ends decoupling takes place at the state level. The latter implies that the practices of state policies are disconnected from the state's core goal of creating public welfare. Data are taken from a survey of 125 doctoral students at one Ukrainian university and supplemented with 30 personal interviews within the sample of respondents. The findings reveal that in the Ukrainian case, means-ends decoupling at the state level causes institutional complexity, which results in means-ends decoupling at the organisational level, which in turn leads to cultural complexity. Institutional and cultural complexities experienced by doctoral students trigger them to sustain means-ends decoupling at the individual level. The main decoupling for most Ukrainian PhD students is that doctoral education neither increases their employability nor contributes to the development of science, economy or society. Means-ends decoupling at all levels results not only in a severe diversion of financial and human capital but also has a negative impact on individuals' well-being, hindering their personal and professional development and evoking a sense of meaning-lessness, alienation and cognitive dissonance.

A new community engagement review tool is being developed in an European context, in the TEFCE project (Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education). This chapter details the design principles of its methodology, in comparison to previous tools such as the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification for Community Engagement, and it illustrates its use on one of the four pilot reviews undertaken to date, at the University of Twente (the Netherlands). The seven dimensions of the TEFCE tool proved to be effective to analyze all aspects of community engagement, focusing on narratives of initiatives. The narrative approach’s flexibility proved effective to allow attention to unique elements in community engagement initiatives. The chapter ends in lessons drawn for further development of the tool and for those interested in using TEFCE or similar approaches.

More and more governments have started to introduce elements of performance in the funding mechanisms for their higher education institutions. An example is a performance agreement: a contract signed between the funding authority and an individual higher education provider. In the Netherlands, a policy experiment involving performance agreements was concluded in 2016. We analyse whether the agreements actually have helped achieve the goals of improving student completion rates, educational quality and increasing the diversity in educational offerings. We present some indicators relating to these goals and discuss what can be learned from the performance agreements experiment in the Netherlands.

The article is based on a study conducted among students in selected Ghanaian universities in the year 2015 to confirm the continued maintenance (or improvement) of the minimum quality standards, based on which accreditation had been granted to their respective institutions. Although the students might not have been conversant with the accrediting agency’s standards, these requirements were provided as possible answers from which the students were to select appropriate and unbiased responses, based on their observations. These indicators related to curriculum, student assessment policies, student assessment of course content and teaching (SACT), policy on ethics, student/staff ratios, physical facilities and library provisions. The responses from both public and private university students confirmed varying degrees of conformity and, or compliance with the Ghanaian accrediting agency’s standards by the universities under its regulation.

Among pioneering European countries who started to establish a formal higher education quality assurance system in the 1980s, the Netherlands adopted one based on peer review and quality enhancement, which was replaced in 2003 by an accountability-oriented accreditation system under the substantial influence of the Bologna Process. Recently, the emphasis is being put on institutional audit to restore a culture of quality within higher education institutions. This article addresses the question of what the higher education worldwide can learn from the evolution of Dutch quality assurance policy concerning control, the balance between accountability and quality improvement and trust. Finally, recent adaptations to the current, third, round of accreditation are also addressed in this context.

Item does not contain fulltext In het afgelopen decennium is binnen het hoger onderwijs in Nederland geleidelijk meer aandacht gekomen voor verschillen tussen studenten en de vraag hoe het onderwijs daarop goed kan inspelen. Door differentiatie - het bieden van variëteit in de inhoud, de vorm en het niveau - kan het onderwijs beter op studenten worden afgestemd. Excellentieonderwijs is onderwijs gericht op studenten die zich in het reguliere onderwijs te weinig uitgedaagd voelen. Hiermee wordt het vizier scherper dan voorheen gericht op studenten die meer dan gemiddeld gemotiveerd en getalenteerd zijn. 13 p.

Item does not contain fulltext In de periode van medio oktober 2015 tot december 2019 hebben wij onderzoek gedaan naar de effecten van excellentieonderwijs in het Nederlandse hoger onderwijs. Dit onderzoek was onderdeel van het onderzoeksprogramma Excellentie van het Nationaal Regieorgaan Onderwijsonderzoek. In dit rapport presenteren wij twee deelstudies van het bredere onderzoek naar excellentieonderwijs, namelijk op het gebied van (1) selectie van studenten voor excellentieonderwijs, en (2) individuele effecten van deelname aan excellentieonderwijs. De andere deelstudies binnen dit bredere onderzoek (namelijk over uitstralingseffecten van excellentieonderwijs op het reguliere onderwijs en op de reguliere organisatie, en over het werkgeversperspectief op excellentieonderwijs) worden besproken in separate rapporten. Een gezamenlijke korte samenvatting over alle deelstudies binnen dit bredere onderzoek naar excellentieonderwijs wordt even-eens gepresenteerd in een afzonderlijke bijdrage. 126 p.

There is a need for tools to enhance transparency in the higher education system. This chapter focuses on three groups of transparency tools, that is: (1) accreditation; (2) global rankings; and (3) performance contracts. We interpret these tools from the perspective of governance, using three different governance paradigms.

The idea of the research university as a key institution for social and economic development in knowledge-intensive societies has been adopted by the Ukrainian government after the fall of the communist regime. Establishing research universities is a long journey during which many things might happen. To understand this journey better in the case of Ukrainian research universities, we applied an analytical framework derived from the concept of travel and translation of ideas. This concept analyses reform through three types of editing rules: the rules of context, logic and formulation. These editing rules have guided our analysis of data gathered from policy documents complemented by face-to-face interviews. We conclude that the idea as introduced came to little, as the turbulent political context precluded long-term planning and universities were faced with conflicting policies.

Increasingly, governments have introduced elements of performance in the funding mechanisms for their higher education institutions. One particular development is the rise of Performance Agreements (PAs), which are contracts signed between funding authorities and individual universities or colleges. The key characteristics of the PAs in place in several OECD countries are summarized before turning to the Netherlands, where an experiment with PAs was recently (2016) concluded. The question is whether this experiment improved performance in the higher education system, where ‘performance’ is understood in terms of the students’ graduation rates, the quality of teaching and learning and the diversity in the provision of education and research. What has been achieved in these areas? And what can be learned from the Dutch performance agreements experiment in general?

This article aims to explore the academic identities under the conditions of means-ends decoupling at the nation-state level. For empirical evidence we choose Ukraine. In 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity despite the adoption of the policies aimed to construct academic identities like in the Western universities the intended outcomes were not achieved. It occurred due to means-ends decoupling both at the nation-state and organizational levels. Policy initiatives involved a decrease in teaching workload of academics, they to allocate more time for research. The education ministry also changed the requirements to the scientific titles aiming to enhance the quality of higher education though the focus of the academics on the research at the international level and improvement of their knowledge of English. Our findings reveal that means-ends decoupling not only passes down from the nation-state and organizational levels to the level of individuals but also results also in significant diversion of human intellectual capital and identity conflict experienced by academics. Data is taken from the interviews with nineteen academics from humanities, social, natural and technical sciences affiliated to one Ukrainian university.

The study assesses the influence of accreditation, after two cycles of evaluation on some selected Ghanaian universities. This was done by examining the changes that had occurred in specified indicators, mainly because of the implementation of suggestions for improvement made by the previous cycle’s evaluators. The study employed quantitative research methods in analysing the changes (for better or for worse) that had occurred in the selected indicators from one cycle of assessments to the other and as observed in the reports of the evaluators. The results showed varying degrees of improvements in the selected indicators at the subsequent assessments over the previous ones.

The growing popularity of the concept of world-class universities raises the question of whether investing in such universities is a worthwhile use of public resources. Does concentrating public resources on the most excellent universities improve the overall quality of a higher education system, especially if definitions of excellence and world-class are made by external ranking organizations? This paper addresses that question by developing a framework for weighing up trade-offs between institutional and system performance, focusing on the potential system-wide improvements which world-class university programmes (WCUPs) may bring. Because WCUPs are in a relatively early stage of their development, systemic effects are not yet clear. We therefore analyse the ex ante reasons that policy makers have for adopting WCUPs to see if they at least seek to create these systemic benefits

Our paper investigates the emergence and development of quality assurance (QA) for teaching in the Netherlands since the mid-1980s. We conceptualise our paper on the background of the multi-level study of New Public Management (NPM) as a narrative of political change, as a choice of certain policy instruments and distinct organisational forms, and as a set of practical control technologies. We show how the specific policy regime of corporatist negotiations and Rechtsstaat instruments deflected QA as a ‘hard’ NPM-policy. QA has nevertheless been instrumental within a wider NPM-inspired policy mix for achieving new ways of governmental control of universities and managerialist control within universities. We conclude by arguing that an important function of QA has been to provide ‘legitimacy through procedures’.

The emergence and development of quality assurance schemes in European countries over the last 15–20 years has inspired many national case studies of the systems and procedures adopted. The methods, contexts, and procedures associated with this policy change are diverse. But although individual countries have set about changing policy in different ways there appear to be some common developmental patterns within the Europe of the Bologna Process. How can these developments be conceptualised? In a first step this paper advances a typology based on the quality assurance literature. In a second step, the paper applies the typology to quality assurance developments in three countries. The third part of the paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the modelling approach in the light of the empirical evidence and a political science analysis of policy change. The paper concludes with a discussion on future directions for the comparative study of policy change within the European Higher Education Area on the basis of this conceptualisation of developments in quality assurance policy.

How are stakeholders represented in higher education institutions’ decision-making bodies that influence the quality of education, and are their viewpoints taken into account? This paper addresses this question taking into account the empirical evidence from eight countries in Europe. Findings indicate that formal barriers are largely absent, that stakeholder influence has grown somewhat over recent years, but that actual influence of stakeholders can be further optimised in higher education institutions.

In the absence of any national quality performance monitoring system (until 2006) 8 of 21 Greek public universities voluntarily participated in the European University Association Institutional Evaluation Programme (EUA-IEP). Empirical data were collected through documents (eight evaluators’ reports). This article uses qualitative content analysis to understand the relationships between neo-institutional pressures (coercive, normative and mimetic) and university characteristics that influenced the choice for the EUA-IEP. Normative and mimetic pressures were detected through these reports. Coercive pressure did not play a role in the decision to invite the EUA-IEP. Different types of universities engaged in the EUA-IEP but not monothematic and ‘Athenian’ universities.

This paper sets out to analyse the need for better “transparency tools” which inform university stakeholders about the quality of universities. First, we give an overview of what we understand by the concept of transparency tools and those that are currently available. We then critique current transparency tools’ methodologies, looking in detail at the question of data sources, the risks involved in constructing league tables and the challenges in using composite indicators. Lastly, we argue in favour of developing a new principle for transparency tools: that of multidimensional ranking.

The emergence of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for Quality Assurance has been seen as an important step towards realising the European Higher Education Area by creating more transparency and accountability in the area of quality assurance. The ESG also include standards as to how quality assurance agencies should be reviewed. In a meta-analysis of the reviews undertaken of quality assurance agencies, this article explores to what extent the ESG is having an impact on the reviews.

PurposeQuality management in Greek higher education at least until 2006 was in an early and debated stage. The intent of this paper is to present the extent of use of the ISO standards in Greek universities till 2006 and simultaneously to evaluate whether adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management tools is consistent with DiMaggio and Powell's notions of isomorphism (coercive, normative, and mimetic).Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a mixed‐methods approach with sequential data collection with several alternations between quantitative and qualitative methods.FindingsIt is found that ISO‐oriented quality management system is fruitfully adopted in units only if all three types of neo‐institutional pressures (coercive, normative and mimetic) are present. These results and the high response rate suggest that there is a quality movement at the micro level in Greek higher education.Research limitations/implicationsQuality management (QM) research within the relatively uncharted Greek universities poses multiple challenges, e.g. in handling politically sensitive subjects, which may benefit readers in overcoming theirs.Originality/valueThe significance of the paper lies in the fact that no existing studies have investigated the adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management system in Greek universities, utilizing neo‐institutional theory and a mixed method research design. Especially relevant is that the study focuses on quality management at the micro level of units within higher education institutions. The study demonstrates how to distinguish different isomorphic pressures empirically.

The article analyses the role of peer review within broader external quality assurance schemes. Based on an analytical framework emphasising that modern quality assurance schemes are designed as a balancing act between standardised guidelines and professional judgement, the article uses data from a recent evaluation of NOKUT, the Norwegian Quality Assurance Agency, to investigate whether and how the peer review process has maintained its central role in quality assurance, not least with respect to promoting excellence and diversity. The findings indicate that what is presented as judgements based on peer expertise, turn out to be a rather technical process in which pre-defined rigid criteria and standards are imperative. In the conclusion, the role of peer review is discussed in relation to developments in European higher education.

This paper looks at the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as an important part of the international trade law system and explores if and how it affects the steering capacity of a nation state regarding higher education. It offers a new conceptual framework to look on the impact of GATS on higher education within its increasingly complex environment by distinguishing between the 'static' dimension (GATS' rules and disciplines) and the 'dynamic' dimension (stakeholders' standpoints, views and actions). Furthermore, by comparing two case studies conducted in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, it connects the theoretical framework on GATS and the steering capacity of a nation state with specific national conditions and complements case studies that have been so far carried out in other countries. We concluded that neither through the static dimension nor through the dynamic, was the steering capacity in the two cases affected directly: nation states remain the prime actors regarding higher education. Nevertheless, exercising their power over higher education has become more complex and nation states must take more consequences of their internal policy choices into account, which may be difficult to predict.

Attention shifted in recent years from design and implementation to use and usefulness of quality assurance. Scientific studies focus increasingly on quality assurance’s impact on curricula and individual teachers. Which factors influence follow‐up activities and what is their relation to improvement of education? One factor that we single out is teachers’ experience of quality assurance and how that influences the climate for quality work in higher education institutions, against the backdrop of the social context in which quality assurance was introduced. The article critically analyses a number of studies on the topic.

This article shows the changes currently made to higher education in the Netherlands, and what they may mean for its future. Findings from a Delphi study were used to develop three scenarios for Dutch higher education in 2010. The Palatial Garden scenario combined little openness of the system with high governmental involvement, making it more ‘strict’ than the actual situation in the country. The Natural Garden was in all dimensions opposed to the Palatial Garden scenario. The Polder Garden scenario was in some respects a ‘zero option’ in that it was built on assumptions of continued, unchanged policies, though in a changing degree structure and in a changing context. Three years on, the scenarios are compared with recent policy plans. The authors conclude that actual developments followed their own path rather than any single one of the garden scenarios. Current policy plans in the Netherlands show signs of (contradictory) compromises between different policy drivers, such as globalisation and national policy, state steering and network society or higher education as a public good and as commodity.

Rankings have been debated in higher education since more than two decades, when the US News & World Report made an impact on the higher education community with its first college ranking. The debate reached new heights of intensity since global university rankings appeared, shortly after the turn of the century. This chapter will focus on the rise of those global university2 rankings, and as I am a member of the team that developed U-Multirank (full disclosure), I will present U-Multirank as an alternative to the first three global university rankings: the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings. Besides methodological issues, in this chapter I will give attention to the impacts these rankings have, including U-Multirank. As the findings regarding impacts turn out to be not unequivocally positive, should we stop producing or reading them — will there be a fall of rankings?

Quality assessment has been part of thefeedback mechanisms of European highereducation systems since around 1980. Due tointernal dynamics, `erosion' of theeffectiveness of first-generation qualityassessment systems has led to loss ofcredibility (legitimacy) of these systems inthe late 1990s. External dynamics alsonecessitate designing a next generation ofquality assurance systems. They include notablya loss of transparency (hence, legitimacy) ofthe European higher education system throughincreased internationalisation (most notablythrough the Bologna process) which puts new,increased demands on institutional arrangementsfor quality assurance.In this paper, we first intend to schematisethe developments of quality assurance in highereducation by introducing a phase model of theeffects of internal and external dynamics.Next, we will analyse this phase model from theperspective of argumentative policy inquiry.Finally, we will contrast policy developmentsin higher education with one other example,viz. environmental policy in the Netherlands.The conclusions of this comparison, as well asthe new challenges set for quality assurance inhigher education by the Bologna process, arethe subject matter for the final section of ourpaper.

The link between internationalisation and quality assurance used to be missing. In this paper, we wish to show why and how this link is being established in recent years by looking at developments that suggest convergence between the two. We emphasise the implications of wider international developments on Europe as a whole. Implications of the Bologna Declaration for quality assurance are elaborated. Finally, we mention a number of unresolved issues that require further research.

Transparency in higher education is one of the aims of the Bologna Declaration (1999). In a number of countries in Europe, this led to processes to change quality assurance into accreditation, which supposedly results in more transparency. Are there lessons to be learnt from experiences in Central and Eastern Europe regarding accreditation since 1990? I maintain that the character of those 'first generation' accreditation systems is more exclusively academic and drives towards uniformity more than the multifaceted systems needed for Bologna's 'second generation' requirements. A 'multiple accreditation system' would answer these requirements better. Some principles of a multiple accreditation system are presented, together with consequences for external evaluation criteria and procedures. Two nascent accreditation system designs in Western European countries (Germany and the Netherlands) are then compared with the demands set by the Bologna Declaration and with the design principles of a multiple accredita...

The author reviews developments in publications on quality assurance of education in (European) higher education over the last decade. The metaphor of sub-atomic structure is used to order the literature in types ('shells') of similar publications, moving from those closely related with the practice of quality assurance methods to more theoretical publications. Some seminal publications are highlighted as 'quantum jumps'. The article ends by noting some recent trends in quality assurance at the system and institutional levels, as well as mentioning theoretically interesting developments, notably the emergence of neo-institutional approaches.

The authors report on West European trends in follow-up arrangements of national quality assurance procedures. They argue that external quality assurance ought to adopt a broader conception of quality than is now often the case. Next, the general public ought to have a guarantee that external quality assurance is valid (through meta-evaluation) and has consequences (through follow-up arrangements). Follow-up currently is not well developed in many European countries in a formal sense, but is receiving more attention as external quality assurance is maturing. Finally, the authors link national quality assurance to the European dimension; an international network could fulfil important functions in making quality assurance transparent and credible across Europe.

The question of whether higher education should actively strive for transparency is all but rhetorical. Of course it should. But why is it nevertheless such a debatable issue? In this chapter I intend to show the principles and preliminary contributions of two transparency instruments that respond to much of the criticism of conventional league table rankings. To do so, I first need to make a brief excursion into the character of higher education and how that affects ideas of diversity, process and performance.

Over the past twenty years, concerted efforts at assuring the quality of higher education institutions (internally and externally) have acquired the status of prominence, and perhaps overemphasis. While these efforts, as a rule, led to institutionalising quality assurance policies and measures of different kinds, the research into quality and quality assurance has generated several major findings worthy of consideration.

The Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG for short) have been part of the regulative infrastructure of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) since 2005 (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 2009).

Our paper investigates the emergence, development and contested nature of quality assurance (QA) in the European policy arena as part and parcel of the Bologna Process. We conceptualise our paper on the background of the study of multi-level and multi-actor dynamics between national, inter-governmental and supranational policies; we discuss the changing ideational framing of QA in the European policy arena, and attempts at European norm-setting and standardisation. QA in the Bologna Process moved from a non-binding inter-governmental agreement towards monitored coordination and became embedded in the competitive turn in European higher education policy stressing an instrumental view of the university. QA policies unfold coercive pressure for convergence alongside soft templates and prototypes of ‘best practice’. The impressive architecture of Bologna leaves, however, ample room for national and institutional design in policy implementation and a variety of preferences and interests of actors at different levels.

Based on two cycles of assessments for accreditation, this study assesses the differential impacts of accreditation on public and private universities in Ghana. Analysis of the evaluator reports indicates no statistically significant difference – improvement or deterioration – between the two cycles of evaluations for both types of institutions. A test comparing the two-cycle aggregated assessment scores between the two categories of universities, however, indicated a significant difference, with the public universities achieving better scores (improvements). Drawing on the evaluators’ reports and the opinions expressed by academics from both categories of institutions, the conclusion was that isomorphic pressures, largely faced by the private universities, accounted for their implementation of suggestions for improvement by the evaluators.

This paper reports on a cross-national comparative study into quality assurance in higher education, which was meant to uncover drivers and barriers to European harmonisation experienced by higher education institutions. The research on which this contribution is based was undertaken in the context of the project ‘Identifying barriers in promoting the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance at institutional level’ (IBAR). The study starts from the instrument in the Bologna Process to increase compatibility of quality assurance in all, by now 47, countries in the EHEA. Our analysis focuses less on the formal quality assurance processes that happen once every five or more years, and more on the continuing internal arrangements that influence the quality of education on a daily basis. We can conclude that in three of the Central European countries involved in this study, state and regional public authorities were seen as important stakeholders, and this somewhat étatist approach contrasts with the more prominent and direct influence of private sector representatives in the Western European country cases

To gain insight into the use of the VSNU research quality evaluations (since 1993) in the practice of research and of institutional management in Dutch universities, interviews were held in eight cases evaluated in the first year of this procedure. The main conclusions are that use of these research evaluations is universal, both ’instrumentally‘ (in decisions directly based on the judgements) and ’incrementally‘ (in decision-making processes not directly linked to the evaluation). Underlying this is ’conceptual use‘: an important change in deans‘ and rectors‘ views of their role in managing research, which they now can realise, because the VSNU research evaluations give them, for the first time, solidly legitimate arguments on which to base strategic decisions. Next to use, other effects can be discerned within universities, pointing to a growing dependency of researchers on managers, necessitating amongst others ever more consciously strategic publication behaviour. Whether quality of research improves in this way, cannot be answered here, but certainly it is more difficult for academics not to engage in research.

Quality may have been a concern for higher education for all of its history (Neave, 1988), but only in recent decades has it become a matter for management of higher education institutions. The managerial turn was not a voluntary move in most higher education institutions. In most cases, higher education institutions were forced to modify their traditional modus operandi by national policy changes, in particular by the introduction of quality assurance schemes, which mostly happened in the wake of the rise of the New Public Management movement in the late 1970s to 1990s across the Western world (Paradeise et al., 2009; Schwarz and Westerheijden, 2004).

In this article a number of elements of a general model of quality assessment in higher education are presented. On the one hand these elements are put in a historical context of quality assessment in Medieval universities and, on the other hand, deduced from the recent experiences with quality assessment in both North-American and Western European countries. With respect to the historical context a distinction is made between the intrinsic and the extrinsic values of higher education. Two types of quality assessment related to these values are also distinguished. Concerning the recent experiences with quality assessment systems, the practices in the U.S.A., Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are explored. In the final section the general mode of quality assessment is discussed in the context of the distinction between the intrinsic and the extrinsic values of higher education.

The role of PIs at the national level in European countries appears to be on the decline at the same time that institutions are moving toward more broad-based quality assessment strategies.

After more than two decades of external quality assurance, there is an increasing interest in questions concerning the impact and effects of this activity. Following an external evaluation of NOKUT – the Norwegian quality assurance agency, this article studies the impact of external quality assurance in detail by analysing quantitative and qualitative feedback from those exposed to evaluations conducted by this agency. The study provides information on the impact of various methods used, how impact is perceived by students, staff and management within universities and colleges, and finally in what areas impact may be identified. A major finding is that impacts are perceived as quite similar regardless of the evaluation method

The basic idea underlying the pilot project ‘CHE Ranking of European Universities’ is that the evolution of a common European Higher Education Area in the context of the Bologna process and a common European Research Area in the Lisbon strategy will lead to growing European mobility of students and higher education staff. Hence, comparable information about European higher education institutions will become more important for students as well as for academics in order for them to make well-informed choices in selecting where to go in the large European space, with perhaps 4,000 higher education institutions in more than 40 countries.

In the last decade, two types of cooperation in European higher education, to with the intergovernmental Bologna Process and the more supranational EU initiatives, seem to complement each other in the construction of a ‘single space’ of European higher education. The ministers responsible for higher education, taking part in the Bologna Process early in 2010 inaugurated the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). We will contend that this was mainly based on a generous reading of the ‘pays politique’ of regulations, while in the ‘pays reel’ (Neave, 2002) of higher education institutions, students and graduates the EHEA is still in the making. For this book, we look at the degree reforms in European higher education in the context of the Bologna Process. This initiative gave higher education cooperation in the European nation states a new face as from 1999. One of the main strategic objectives of the Bologna Process is to increase the compatibility–in more operational terms, similarity–of European higher education systems in general and national degree structures in particular in order to make the European Higher Education Area a space in which student and graduate mobility will be increased.

As higher education begins to operate increasingly in a European framework, consequences for the assurance of quality in higher education are bound to become evident. A pilot study to develop a methodology for the comparison of quality across different higher education systems is described. The project involved comparison of ten study programmes in economics in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. A design derived from general considerations about the concept of quality and about the nature of higher education and different systems incorporated two stages. First was the collection of information and the processing of this information into manageable data sets; second was the assessment of the information by way of peer review. The proceedings and principal findings of both stages followed the overview of the project design. The article concludes by highlighting some implications of this pilot project for the future of quality assurance in higher education on a European scale.