lifelong learning and distance higher education - Asia Pacific Region

up their own accreditation or certification agency. However, any quality assurance oraccreditation system that is not backed by national or other competent authorities is verydifficult for outsiders to judge.A similar problem appears with joint degrees, which are offered by higher educationinstitutions in various countries. Such programmes are often not covered by a nationalquality assurance or accreditation system. Even though one would expect such crossborderforms of education to be internationally recognised, they are a complicatedmatter for credential evaluators as their status and quality are often hard to identify. TheBologna process reinforces the rise of international co-operative forms of educationand, especially given the emphasis on international employability, an urgent solution isrequired to enhance recognition in these fields, too.INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES TO PROMOTE QUALITYASSURANCETo achieve transparency in quality assurance and accreditation at the international level,close collaboration between national and international parties is required. Due to theimpact of quality assurance on international recognition, this process is also of greatimportance for the NARIC/ENIC networks, which are major players in the processof international recognition. This section gives an overview of the most importantinternational developments regarding quality assurance in higher education (see alsoDivis, forthcoming).An important actor promoting quality assurance at the European level is the EuropeanAssociation for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). ENQA and theNARIC/ENIC networks have set a joint agenda to develop an information system onnational quality assurance and accreditation mechanisms for foreign target groups and acommon language on how to deal with cross-border education. In addition, the EuropeanUniversity Association (EUA) and the National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB)fulfil key roles in enhancing quality in higher education institutions, making nationalsystems as transparent as possible and achieving international recognition of othercountries’ quality judgments and accreditation statements.A number of accreditation organisations, including members of the ENQA, originallyfrom eight countries that introduced national accreditation systems, have establishedthe European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA). The ultimate objective of ECA, inshort, is to accept each other’s national accreditation statements. This might be crucial forinternational recognition, because these countries could use ECA to automatically recogniseeach other’s national degrees instead of on a case-by-case basis. The NARICs/ENICs fromFlanders and the Netherlands are the first two to do this (see the section below).The Joint Quality Initiative is an informal network of representatives primarily fromquality assurance organisations and ministries in Europe. The network aims to increaseinternational collaboration on quality assurance and to enhance the transparency ofEuropean Bachelors and Masters programmes. From the perspective of recognition,the JQI’s most important output is the document Shared descriptors for Bachelors andMasters degrees (the “Dublin descriptors”), in which generic learning objectives orcompetencies are formulated.UNESCO’s European Centre for Higher Education (CEPES) also provides importantbackstopping in the field of accreditation. As part of a project on Strategic Indicatorsfor Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, CEPES has analysed the quality124