The Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area
The Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) were adopted by the Ministers responsible for higher education in 2005 following a proposal prepared by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in co-operation with the European Students’ Union (ESU), the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE) and the European University Association (EUA).
Since 2005, considerable progress has been made in quality assurance as well as in other Bologna action lines such as qualification frameworks, recognition and the promotion of the use of learning outcomes, all these contributing to a paradigm shift towards student-centered learning and teaching.
Given this changing context, in 2012 the Ministerial Communiqué invited the E4 Group (ENQA, ESU, EUA, EURASHE) in cooperation with Education International (EI), BUSINESSEUROPE and the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) to prepare an initial proposal for a revised ESG “to improve their clarity, applicability, and usefulness, including their scope’.
The revision included several consultation rounds involving both the key stakeholder organizations and ministries. The many comments, proposals and recommendations received have been carefully analyzed and taken very seriously by the Steering Group (SG). They are reflected in the resulting version of the ESG. Moreover, this version also reflects a consensus among all the organizations involved in how to take forward quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area and, as such, provides a firm basis for successful implementation.
European
Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA)
European Students’ Union (ESU)
European University Association (EUA)
European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE)
In cooperation with:
Education International (EI)
BUSINESSEUROPE
European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR)
ARES Criteria for ranking
With the massification of higher education both the number of students and the number of higher education institutions have grown. Institutions are required to serve not only a larger but also an increasingly diverse clientele. With the concept of the knowledge economy, an even wider range of expectations of the functions and missions of higher education institutions emerged, in relation to their contribution to regional development, innovation and more generally to economic growth. In order for higher education systems to respond effectively to these trends, it is generally argued that more diversity in higher education systems is needed (Birnbaum, 1983; van Vught, 1996).
Increasingly, however, these trends are taking place in the context of globalization which leads to fiercer competition for human and financial resources across the borders of nations and continents. As a result, rather than horizontal diversification a tendency towards vertical stratification can be observed. This is fuelled by global university rankings, which cement the notion of a world university competition or market capable of being arranged in a single “league table” for comparative purposes, while giving even more impetus to intra-national and international competitive pressures in the sector.
The European higher education landscape is highly diverse. In terms of its size, the European Higher Education Area (including the 45 Bologna signatory countries) is comparable to that of the United States’ higher education system. There are 3,300 higher education establishments in the European Union and approximately 4,000 in Europe as a whole (EC, 2003). At the same time, however, the European higher education landscape is far more complex than US higher education as it is primarily organized at national and regional levels, each with their own legislative conditions, cultural and historical frames, and a vast array of different languages in which the various forms, types, and missions of higher education institutions may be expressed (van Vught et al., 2005, p. 4). With the creation of the European Higher Education Area major efforts are underway to enhance the convergence between higher education systems in the different countries, the Bologna Process being the main vehicle to achieve this. The Bologna Process, initiated in 1999, represents the totality of commitments freely taken by each signatory country (initially, 29 nations; since 2005, 45 nations) to reform its own higher education system in order to create overall convergence at the European level, as a way to enhance intra-European mobility, employability and international/global competitiveness. The achievements of the Bologna Process have been substantial and influential. The initial focus was on changing degree structures into a two-cycle (undergraduate-graduate) system, and the wider implementation of ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) with the aim of enhancing the readability and recognition of degrees. This has extended to the development of a European Qualifications Framework, the description and “tuning” of competencies and learning outcomes at curriculum level, substantial initiatives in the areas of quality assurance and accreditation and work on the “third cycle”, that is, the reform of studies at the doctoral/Ph.D. level (Huisman & van der Wende, 2004; van der Wende, 2007).
A series of bi-annual studies have demonstrated that the implementation of the two-cycle degree structure was established in almost all countries by 2005, although in various modes and at varying speed of introduction (Reichert & Tauch, 2005). Despite such achievements as the convergence of degree structures and the introduction of common frameworks for quality assurance and for qualifications, certain tensions between harmonization and diversity have continued. In-depth studies and comparisons between countries show that the actual implementation of the new structures can vary significantly
ARES ranking is designed to produce a landing list in which each university is assigned a specific rank. Higher ranks (A, B and C categories) indicate higher quality, lower ranks (below C) indicate lower quality. How is this achieved? It requires a specific definition of what constitutes quality in a university. On the basis of this definition, quality criteria and indicators are used to assess the universities. In order to calculate an overall score, each indicator has to be given particular weight. Quality criteria, such as research impact or teaching quality in the case of THE, need to be measured by specific indicators like the number of citations per faculty in the Thompson Scientific Database or by the student/faculty ratio. The indicators, in this case, are given an equal weight of 20%. This approach then needs to be applied equally to all universities.
Ranking lists all use different definitions of university quality, different criteria and indicators to measure quality and different weightings for each indicator. For this reason, the ranking results are also very different. The ranking results cannot be explained in a sensible way without knowing what was measured and what the measurement process looks like.
There is a major difference between using the number of university alumni who earned Nobel prizes as an education quality indicator (as the Shanghai ranking list does) and using the student/faculty ratio (as THE ranking list does). And the results will look different if you give a research output weight of 20% (as THE ranking list does) or 40% (as the Shanghai ranking list does).
In addition, the definitions of quality and the measurements used are determined by ranking list organizers. In the case of media ranking lists, this means the media themselves. Often it is unclear why a particular definition was chosen, how well it is founded, by whom it was decided and how open and reflective the decision process was. And yet, such ranking lists have considerable influence when used to measure the quality of universities.
The Shanghai ranking list uses objective data that can be measured quantitatively. For its part, THE ranking list relies heavily on subjective evaluations by experts. How valid the latter is and how well they represent the institutions covered are important questions that are left unanswered. Quality is defined on the basis of subjective criteria applied to all universities, regardless of what their mission and goals may be. The results are then presented in a league table, suggesting a high degree of measurement precision. Such precision, however, cannot realistically be achieved and should not even be implied in the first place. The promise of measuring university quality adequately and precisely across very diverse institutions and for different stakeholders is simply unrealistic.
There are ranking approaches that are better suited to meeting the demands of the task. They are based on a number of basic principles such as:
- a ranking of individual disciplines or departments instead of whole institutions
- a multidimensional concept of university quality instead of a “one-size-fits-all” approach, taking into account the diversity of academic institutions, missions and goals as well as language and cultural specifics
- separate measurement and presentation of single indicators - that may be ranked separately - allowing for individual preferences ("my-ranking") instead of an overall score
- a presentation of ranking results in rank groups (top, middle, bottom groups) instead of league tables
The ARES ranking pursues the following criteria:
a. Quality of education (including the monitoring of the educational process and improvement of the faculty professional level)
b. Quality of research (including the involvement of students in research)
c. International cooperation
d. Collaboration with potential employers
e. Regional significance of the university
