Criteria for inclusion

Quality assurance agencies that wish to be included on the register need to demonstrate that they operate in substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG).

Two-step procedure

Applicants are requested to provide evidence of their substantial compliance through an independent external review of their activities. Such reviews are organised by third parties and are not under EQAR’s supervision. In order to enable EQAR to make well-founded decisions, the Procedures for Applications set out some minimum requirements for external reviews. These requirements are explained in the section external review.

Thus, applications are assessed in a two-step procedure: only if the external review on which the application is based fulfils all requirements (see chapter 4), does the Register Committee proceed to consider the applicant’s substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG).

The European Standards and Guidelines (ESG)

In 2005, the ESG were adopted by the Bologna Process ministerial summit in Bergen (Norway). The ESG contain common principles and reference points for quality assurance of higher education in Europe. Those are organised in three parts, covering the different levels of quality assurance:

• Part 1: Internal quality assurance within higher education institutions
• Part 2: External quality assurance of higher education
• Part 3: External quality assurance agencies

Naturally, parts 2 and 3 thereof are those with direct relevance to quality assurance agencies and thus serve as criteria for inclusion on the register. It should, however, be noted that standard 2.1 expects part 1 of the ESG to be considered in external quality assurance activities.

Further information, the full text of the ESG

Substantial compliance

In order to cope with diverse higher education systems and traditions   throughout the 46 Bologna countries, the ESG focus on principles rather than on prescribing procedural details:

“The standards and guidelines are designed to be applicable to all higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies in Europe, irrespective of their structure, function and size, and the national system in which they are located. […] it has not been considered appropriate to include detailed "procedures" in the recommendations of this chapter of the report, since institutional and agency procedures are an important part of their autonomy. It will be for the institutions and agencies themselves, co-operating within their individual contexts, to decide the procedural consequences of adopting the standards contained in this report.” (ESG p. 11f.)

Bearing this in mind, the ESG can obviously not be used as a check list. EQAR expects applicants to be in substantial compliance with the ESG: that is, if a standard is not fulfilled by the letter of the law, the applicant might still be considered substantially compliant if the stipulated principle is appropriately respected in practice.

The different standards are often linked to each other and there is sometimes considerable overlap between them. Furthermore, some standards are much broader than others. The Register Committee therefore makes a holistic judgement on an applicant's substantial compliance with the ESG, rather than following any automatic quantitative rules.

ENQA membership

Full membership of ENQA is normally considered as satisfactory evidence for substantial compliance with the ESG since, to become full member of ENQA, agencies also need to evidence their substantial compliance with the ESG.

Considering that those agencies and their external review processes have undergone sound scrutiny by ENQA, the Register Committee can build upon ENQA’s prior work to some extent: for instance, if ENQA has already addressed certain questions, EQAR might use this as a starting point and might be able to solve certain issues more efficiently.