After March 2023, the UK-wide Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) will stop being the Designated Quality Body for English higher education, as the QAA wants to avoid losing its registration with the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR).
A new paper from the Higher Education Policy Institute, Where do we go from here? Quality assurance in English higher education (Policy Note 44) by Andrew M Boggs, Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies and University Clerk at Kingston University, considers the consequences.
Andrew M Boggs, the author of the report, said:
There is growing concern that key elements of the Higher Education and Research Act are not being faithfully executed. Yet these elements helped assure the public that we would have a coherent and appropriate approach to quality and standards, protecting student interests and institutional autonomy in England, and this was one of the hallmarks of the UK’s world-leading higher education sector. This should be of concern to parliamentarians.
The increased separation between England and the rest of the UK on regulation of quality and standards in higher education is likely to damage the international reputation of higher education throughout the UK. This risks one of our greatest exports at a time when the UK needs to capitalise on where it has global strength.
