A EUniQ partnership to kickstart a European QA framework for European Universities

NVAO coordinates the EUniQ project on behalf of the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training. Axel Aerden, NVAO’s Managing Director Flanders, is quite impressed with the highly ambitious concept of the European Universities. These transnational alliances of higher education institutions (HEIs) pool expertise and resources, allowing students to get a real European education, and in the future perhaps a real European degree. “In June 2019, the first 17 European Universities were selected, and more are to follow in 2020. The European Commission (EC) provides these alliances with ‘seed capital’ for a period of 3 years. Though size, range and nationalities may vary greatly, all alliances share the EC’s ambition: to promote European values and identity and to revolutionise the quality and competitiveness of European higher education.”

“If HEIs are willing to step up to the plate, then we, as quality assurance agencies, have to do whatever we can to support them. Instead of holding them back, it is up to us to think ahead with them, doing away with obstacles and providing them with the right framework and tools to live up to their European ambitions. One of these obstacles are the differences in national legislation. Though for HEIs, with their global mindset, international collaboration may come as a second nature, they are still firmly embedded within their own country’s policies and legislation. And this may cause difficulties when it comes to for instance harmonising curricula and study credits, issuing joint diplomas or recognition of teaching hours. Internal and external quality assurance (QA), in particular, becomes quite a challenge in multinational consortia bringing together HEIs with very different legal and economic constraints, educational environments and quality assurance cultures. So, we need to find ways to overcome these differences and establish a joint framework. That’s where the EUniQ project comes in.” 

Mark Frederiks, International Policy Coordinator at NVAO (Flanders) and Project Manager of EUniQ, confirms: “The ultimate aim of the EUniQ project is to develop a European QA framework for European Universities. This may seem only logical, but it involves many different aspects and just as many different partners. That is why we have composed a project consortium that reflects the complex situation in the field. The EUniQ partnership consists of 6 ministries, 8 QA agencies, and the European stakeholder organisations EUA, ESU and ENQA. The European Universities serve as case studies and primary stakeholders. They have been involved from the very start of the project. Furthermore, as EUniQ is set up as a peer learning project, we’ve deliberately chosen to combine partners from countries with a fully developed QA system that are already using the European Approach for QA of Joint Programmes, with partners from countries that are still in the process of  rolling out this approach.”

“This diverse consortium of project partners forces us to draw up a framework that takes into account the full range of existing national QA systems, proactively addressing all possible bottlenecks. This way of working may not exactly make things easier now, but it will save time and effort afterwards and help us to secure a broad support for a European QA framework. In the same line of thinking, we purposely chose to design a joint framework this early on in the process. When EUniQ was launched in May 2019, the results of the first call for European Universities were not even known yet. The first workshop we organised in October 2019, was actually the first time that all 17 European University alliances met. Raising the issue of QA early on, provides us with the unique opportunity to design a methodology for QA in cooperation with these alliances and along with the actual roll-out and further development of the European Universities concept.”

“Some of the European Universities already had a first outline for a joint organisation of QA, while others still had to kickstart the thinking process. With EUniQ, we can bring in our QA expertise right from the beginning and analyse legal and other issues as they come along. In this, we have learned from the past. With the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees, for instance, things were done the other way round. The curricula were established first, while the external QA system and the eventual European Approach for QA of Joint Programmes were only decided upon when the programmes were long up and running. This resulted in a lengthy and stressful period of uncertainty, and even today, the implementation of the European Approach is still lacking.”

“So this time, we wanted to do things differently, especially since the concept of European Universities comprises so much more than setting up a joint programme. The European University alliances aim to implement a long-term strategy not only on education, but on the linkages with research & innovation and community services as well. What’s more, the alliances consist of a broad range of very diverse HEIs embedded in equally diverse socioeconomic regions. So it is key that we design, from the start, a flexible QA framework that fits both the complex context and the strong ambitions of these European Universities.”

“So, however logical the aim of developing a European QA framework may seem, in reality, it is not as straightforward. And yet, we have already come a long way with EUniQ, thanks to the expertise and open mindset of the project partners and the European Universities. As mentioned, in October 2019 we assembled all 17 alliances for a workshop. In preparation, we asked the alliances to give us the 5 most important elements of their strategy and their perspectives on how internal and external QA should be linked. From this survey we were able to conclude that, although the context may vary, all alliances highly value similar elements, such as impactful collaboration with stakeholders. The alliances also emphasised that internal and external QA should be aligned, and that the European QA framework should be lean, trust-based and enhancement-led.”

“Based on our findings, we developed a preliminary methodology, which we discussed with both the European Universities and other stakeholders. Using their input, we finetuned our methodology and set up a pilot European QA framework. This framework consists of 4 evaluation criteria, taking into account the special features of European Universities: the vision on quality, the implementation, the evaluation and monitoring, and the improvement policy of the alliances. Primary focus of the framework is to support quality enhancement, which also fits the very early stage of development of European Universities. The experiences of NVAO with the Flemish institutional reviews are an inspiring example for designing an enhancement-focused framework based on trust in HEIs.”

“The EUniQ partners selected 4 alliances to serve as pilot cases, making sure they represent the rich diversity of the alliances in focus, approach, and setting. The partners also nominated possible experts with experience in (online) education, research, innovation, senior university and network management, QA and internationalisation. From this pool, the agencies coordinating the pilots selected 12 experts. These experts (including 4 student experts), together with 8 coordinators from the agencies, constitute the panels that will evaluate and meet with the 4 alliances taking part in the pilot. It is important to stress that these pilots will not have any impact on the EC assessment of the European Universities. Rather, the results from these pilots will be used as learning opportunities for all parties involved, so as to help design a fitting external QA framework and provide the alliances with feedback and (re)commendations on their internal QA.”

“As the European Universities have only recently been launched, of course, we won’t be able to assess actual joint programmes and other joint initiatives. It is too soon for that, so we will have to do without the usual data and input. Nevertheless, we should be able to get a clear view of the alliances’ vision on quality, their common structures, the way they want to boost mobility and innovation, and their involvement with stakeholders, such as students, staff, local policy makers and enterprises.“

“The pilot assessments were to take place from May to August 2020, but there will be some delay, due to Covid-19. Nevertheless, we should be able to have all pilot assessments finished by the beginning of 2021. The results will be discussed at a European conference, the input of which will be used to create both a QA Development Roadmap and a proposed European Framework for QA of European Universities. Both will be presented at a dissemination conference to be held in 2021.”

However, the end of the EUniQ project will be far from the end of the debate on QA of HEIs in Europe. Axel Aerden concludes: “In Flanders, we can rely on three decades of experience in QA of HEIs. What’s more, thanks to NVAO’s binational organisation and the global mindset of the Dutch and Flemish HEIs, we have gained considerable expertise in international QA. Thus, we have been paving the way for a European QA framework for years now, participating in European networks and coordinating game-changing projects. We can put this expertise to excellent use in the EUniQ project. But not all countries in Europe have a similar long-standing tradition of external QA. There is still a lot of work to be done to build common ground. We are quite committed though, at NVAO, to help continue paving the way with initiatives such as EUniQ. After all, I firmly believe that external QA is also one of the key elements in boosting the quality of our HEIs and making them futureproof.”