Quality in European Higher Education Area – quality assurance/enhancement system and quality culture
Abstract
Developments in the Bologna process became the impetus for intensive development of pan-European cooperation, where quality has been playing the crucial role. Already in 2001, the universities sent the message from Salamanca stressing that quality is their primary responsibility.
In Bergen (2005) the higher education ministers adopted the Standards and guidelines for quality assurance. The paper is the result of studies of various documents and the personal experience of the author.
The basic sources were communiqués of ministers, messages, declarations and documents of EUA and the Bologna Process. Decreasing ability of European states to fund higher education from public resources has resulted in increasing pressure for more performance and efficiency of universities.
The external quality assessment has been developed; funding has been linked to "qualitative" results, usually measured by quantitative indicators. Therefore EUA issued its statement (2010) and highlighted the primary university responsibility for quality, the autonomy as well as taking into account the diversity of the sector.
It called on each university to start creating its institutional quality culture. The quality is not interchangeable with any system of quality assurance, how carefully-adjusted and mastered it can be.
Relationship to quality must be carefully shaped and developed.