Quality assurance in converging cultures

The paper argues for active involvement of external stakeholders in QA. External stakeholders are actors in the quality culture and therefore cannot be omitted in the QA cycle. All stakeholders internal and external are actors in the culture of the institutions they produce meaning from the construable signs in the HEIs culture meaning which again change how we perceive these very signs or symbols. QA systems must therefore ensure that feed-back-mechanisms are in place on both operational and structural level of the QA as frameworks change as legislature change as indeed stakeholders change. It is thus inevitable that QA-systems must change.

This paper was presented at EQAF and reflects the views of the named authors only.