ENQA Members’ Forum Discusses Trust, Transparency, and Good Practice in Quality Assurance

From April 22 to 24, representatives of the Quality Agency for Higher Education (AIKA) participated in the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) Members’ Forum, titled “Strengthening trust in an evolving higher education landscape” held in Budapest, Hungary.

During the forum, particular attention was given to several topics:

• the current version of the ESG, which will be proposed for approval at the 2027 Bologna Process Ministerial Conference, as well as related changes in the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes, and the ECTS Users’ Guide;
• cross-border quality assurance processes, involving cooperation between agencies from multiple countries within a single evaluation procedure;
• the work of the ENQA Agency Review Committee and the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) Register Committee in ensuring consistent decision-making regarding agencies’ compliance with ESG.

During the forum, agencies from several countries shared their good practices on mechanisms for fostering trust, including institutional support and post-evaluation (follow-up) activities, various approaches to institutional evaluation through gradual assessment steps in risk-based quality assurance systems, promoting trust-based models, and supporting institutions with less developed internal quality assurance mechanisms.

The ENQA Members’ Forum emphasized that trust is not merely a formal status, but a continuous process of practical cooperation. A key conclusion was that genuine trust in quality assurance agencies can only be achieved when higher education institutions, the state, and other stakeholders work together, based on transparency and confidence in the quality of each other’s work.

The information gained at the forum about developments in the European Higher Education Area and the diverse practices of other agencies is particularly important for AIKA in developing its institutional evaluation model and methodology in full compliance with ESG and in alignment with good practices in comparable systems.

ENQA is an association that represents its members at both the European and international levels. Its members are quality assurance organizations operating within the European Higher Education Area.

Participation in the event took place within the framework of the ESF+ project No. 4.2.2.6/1/25/I/001 “Implementation of Cyclical Institutional Accreditation in Higher Education.”