The ESG and students' involvement in European quality assurance of higher education

Abstract

This thesis is an empirical analysis of the nature of compliance of European external QA agencies with the ESG’s criterion on students’ inclusion on external review panels. The data derived from the reports of the panels of ENQA coordinated reviews of various European QA agencies is used as the main source for this study, agencies’ self-evluation reports and articles on students’ engagement and participation in QA activities are used as secondary source materials. The new institutional theory and overview of cultural/value/norm systems dominating within the Higher Education sector have been applied to explore, clarify and justify variations and similarities detected among European QA agencies in respect to students’ inclusion in their local activities. A classification of QA agencies has been made in accordance with three pillars of institutions: Regulative, Normative, Cultural-Cognitive and three mechanisms of compliance: Coercive, Normative and Mimetic prevailing within the individual agency’s structure/culture while adopting the ESG’s requirements. This study’s major finding is an enhanced theoretical understanding of the factors explaining the variations in the practices of students’ inclusion in QA agencies’ activities, exploring the extent to which European QA agencies are adapting to the requirement of students’ engagement in external reviews of HEIs and identifying the value added by having student representatives in peer review panels. The classification invented by me also gives a different approach to the explored topic and presents the research findings in a precise and novel form of typology.