Approche comparée de politiques d’assurance-qualité des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur européens

Abstract

Over the last decade, the European higher education landscape has been characterised by an increasing influence of supranational contexts and priorities on the formulation of national agendas, notably in the domain of quality assurance. This trend has gained relevance with the adoption of the Bologna Declaration of June 1999 and the progressive implementation of its agenda as regards not only the organisation of study programmes across Europe but also the recognition of the national diplomas and degrees. As a result, most countries have taken up the challenge of harmonising their national policies in these and related domains in order to address the expectations that have risen from the prospected construction of a European higher education area.

It remains open to debate, however, what is actually meant when invoking the “harmonisation of national policies” in higher education. Does “harmonisation” mean “convergence” and, if so, of which kind and of what dimensions? How relevant is the “national variable”, if at all, in adopting and interpreting supra-national trends and demands? Taking Western European countries – namely England, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland – as examples and quality assurance as the main descriptor, the paper provides some elements of response to these and other related questions.

To that end, it develops a framework of analysis of quality assurance as a public policy. This framework distinguishes between the ideational and material dimensions forming the policy and brings forward five policy choices that are fundamental to that particular domain. Then, the discussion turns to the responses that the selected countries have given to these fundamental policy choices. Differences and similarities are identified, thus highlighting the specificities of the different national settings in the type of responses provided. In the third section, the paper brings forward the issue of accreditation and its (re)-emergence in the European context. It argues that accreditation has become the dominant policy objective of national quality assurance policies, which impacts significantly on the overall organisation of higher education. However, despite the commonality of the objective, the implementation of accreditation varies in the four countries under consideration, notably in the division of tasks among the different stakeholders. On the basis of the discussion and the analysis, the concluding part of the paper allows for a reconsideration of the extent of cross-national policy convergence in quality assurance policies and, finally, for an assessment of the actual relevance of national institutional inheritances when confronted to the formulation and implementation of these policies in the new European higher education landscape.