This year the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA, UK) and the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) have carried out a joint review of the UK transnational education (TNE) provision in Hong Kong. In the spirit of the advice contained in the publication Cooperation in Cross Border Higher Education: A Toolkit for Quality Assurance Agencies by the QACHE project, QAA and HKCAAVQ have taken inter-agency cooperation to a further level moving beyond the sharing of information, data, and intelligence. QAA reviewers acted as full members of the HKCAAVQ accreditation panels. Playing a dual role, they were able to use evidence gathered through the HKCAAVQ accreditation process to inform the QAA TNE review process, thus reducing the information burden on providers. This joint approach also allowed QAA peer-reviewers to benchmark standards and processes in action and, on this basis, to conclude that HKCAAVQ’s reviews and judgments can be relied on by both QAA and the institutions offering UK programmes in Hong Kong.
The findings of the review exercise have been published in the form of individual institutional reports and an overview country report, accessible here.