The European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) has been collecting information on registered agencies’ external quality assurance activities annually since 2014. The collected data reveal the volume of external quality assurance activities within the scope of the ESG as well as trends and changes within higher education systems across the EHEA.
In 2018, the 46 EQAR-registered agencies carried out a total of 8,902 external QA activities of which 91% were programme level evaluations or accreditations, 8% were reviews of a higher education institution and 0.3% were joint programme evaluations. Similar to previous years, the activities were carried out across 66 countries. Cross border activities covered 57 higher education systems, most of which were carried out within the EHEA member countries (29 higher education systems).
The data revealed a drop in the external QA activities at the programme level compared to previous years. External quality assurance activities at the institutional level have, in turn, increased by 22%. Additionally, the monitoring also showed a rise in the number of cross border reviews by 26% and of joint programmes by 37%. The share of cross-border activity continues to vary considerably between agencies.
More information on the analysis is available on the EQAR website.