In the rapidly changing higher education environment and with increased internationalisation, the diversity of European higher education institutions’ missions and profiles ensures knowledge creation as well as social and economic development through creative responses to complex questions. At the same time, there is a growing demand to ensure the quality of the education offered by higher education institutions and to promote transparency.

The theme of this year’s Forum is “Creativity and Diversity: Challenges for quality assurance beyond 2010”. The main goal of this event is to provide a discussion forum centred on how current internal and external quality assurance approaches take account of institutional diversity and support creativity and innovative practices in higher education. Through plenary and parallel sessions, the discussion will frame these issues in the context of the ongoing construction of the European Higher Education Area.

Following the success of the previous European Quality Assurance Forums, the fourth forum, co-organised by ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE and supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission, is hosted by Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) on 19-21 November 2009.

Conference Objectives

The specific objectives of this fourth forum are:

• To gain an understanding of how higher education institutions and QA agencies’ quality procedures and practices take into account the diversity of institutional missions and profiles
• To explore how internal and external quality assurance processes may stimulate or hinder creativity and innovative practices in higher education.

Participants

The forum provides a platform for discussion and exchange of experiences among the main stakeholders in quality assurance. Specifically, the forum will be of interest to rectors and vice-rectors responsible for QA, QA officers in higher education institutions, students, QA agency staff, and researchers working on higher education or the QA field.