The fifth European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) provides a unique platform for the higher education and QA communities to follow, shape and anticipate developments in the area. The main purpose of the event is to foster a dialogue on quality assurance that bridges national boundaries and leads to a truly European discussion on QA in higher education (notably through the Bologna process higher education reforms), and to create a common European understanding of QA through a dialogue among different stakeholder groups.

The theme of this year’s Forum is “Building Bridges: Making sense of QA in European, national and institutional contexts”.
Through plenary and parallel sessions, the discussion will focus on the grass roots level of quality assurance in the context of the ongoing development of the European Higher Education Area.

Following the success of the previous European Quality Assurance Forums, the fifth forum, co-organised by ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE and supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission, is hosted by University Claude Bernard Lyon I, France on 18-20 November 2010.

The 2010 Forum will seek to examine how quality assurance tools and processes implemented at institutional and agency level:

• relate to European and national level policy discussions and decisions, and
• interact with and support institutional quality assurance frameworks and quality culture.