Don F. Westerheijden – författare

This volume presents a rich account of the development of accreditation and evaluation in 20 European countries. The authors are leaders in the field and they have cooperated in this effort by writing richly different, often deep and insightful analyses of the situation in their country. The two editors have added a synopsis detailing the main trends, and sketching commonalities as well as contrasts in the developments across Europe. The book shows how accreditation is becoming a main mechanism in the steering of higher education all over Europe. The book is unique in its analysis of forces driving towards the spread of different models of accreditation in the emerging European Higher Education area. Readers will obtain an up-to-date picture of the state of affairs of accreditation in the framework of evaluation activities in Europe. They will gain an understanding of why accreditation and evaluation systems have evolved the way they have, and subsequently, they will obtain more realistic views on potentialities for European comparability and cooperation in this area.

By bringing together leading experts on quality assurance in higher education from seven countries (from Europe, the USA and South Africa), this volume intends to go several steps further than most publications on quality assurance. First, it brings together views from micro to macro levels in the multi-actor space, showing how quality assurance impacts the higher education system throughout. Second, it links quality assurance solidly to issues of regulation, translation (rather than mechanical ‘implementation’) and transformation, instead of being only focused on quality assurance as a single policy instrument. Third, it uses this broad range of research insights to criticize current practices, explaining for instance why sometimes people have difficulty in tracing any concrete effects of all initiatives taken in this area. Finally, the book offers proposals for better focusing quality assurance in the future to address institutional challenges better.

The general purpose of the book then is to give an engaged, academic reflection on how quality assurance is embedded in higher education and in a dynamic way to assess its impacts and potential improvements.