It was with mixed feelings that I read the most recent EUREC Masters newsletter (December 2011). Recently the Agency attended the European University Association’s 6th European Quality Assurance Forum, the main theme of which was “Quality and Trust: at the heart of what we do.”
I would like to extract a piece from the short article and analyse it from my perspective (emphasis my own):
“The main themes developed along the sessions and workshops were trust, the need for transparent information and the importance of all stakeholders’ involvement, in particular students’ involvement, in the quality assurance processes.
The tools developed for the EUREC Master programme are in line with these recommendations, and are regularly checked and reviewed in order to constantly improve the quality of the EUREC Master.”
I will look at each bold word/phrase from the above passage in turn:
- Trust/transparent information – More than two years ago, due to a lack of trust, I asked Paola Mazzuchelli to make publicly available a detailed breakdown of how the student fees are allocated. I have yet to receive a response.
- Students involvement, in the quality assurance process/tools developed – It would be interesting for EUREC to report on exactly how students are involved in the quality assurance of the course as well as to flesh out in detail the tools that have been developed to do so.
- Regularly checked and reviewed – For the sake of transparency it would be good to know who checks what, how they check it, how regularly it is done and what happens if things are not up to scratch.
