The leaders of the accreditation agencies of the Visegrad Group countries signed a memorandum at a meeting in Budapest on 7 October, creating a joint forum for quality assurance in higher education in the V4 countries (V4QA Forum).
The invitation was accepted and the meeting was personally attended by the Chair of the Executive Board of the Slovak Accreditation Agency for Higher Education, prof. Robert Redhammer, together with representatives from Poland and the Czech Republic.
All participants agreed on common goals to contribute to improving the quality of higher education in their country, as well as on several pitfalls on the path to these goals. One of them is the “effect” of relatively small countries, where experts in a narrow field know each other and it is difficult to ensure the independence and impartiality of evaluations by domestic experts.
In the Memorandum, the agencies agreed to develop cooperation in quality assurance in higher education. This will involve, in particular, the mutual exchange of information, the consultation of registers, and the exchange of practical experience of assessment and decision-making. The mutual exchange of experts from individual agencies was also agreed, including the possibility to participate in the evaluation of institutional and program activities by their direct participation in mutual procedures.
The chairs of the accreditation agencies agreed on the rotating principle of the annual working meeting. Next year will be chaired by the V4 Slovak Republic, so the meeting will take place in Bratislava.
