About Cequint

Internationalisation is perceived to be a key factor for modern knowledge- based societies; and has been steadily increasing in importance and scope. Higher education institutions pursue internationalisation as a pro-active strategic issue. Internationalisation of the curriculum and of the teaching and learning process has become increasingly relevant for higher education institutions and various forms of cross-border education have become widespread.

Following this trend, higher education institutions and programmes have been asking quality assurance agencies to include internationalisation in their assessment. A consistent, qualitative methodology was however not readily available.

Internationalisation is a complex phenomenon and is strongly influenced by the context in which it takes places. As a multidimensional concept, the realisation of internationalisation widely varies in different higher education settings. This means the context and the varied ways in which it is operationalised need to be taken into account when assessing the quality of internationalisation.

Based on these observations, the members and partners of the European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education (ECA) have developed this methodology to assess the quality of internationalisation.

This methodology tested in twelve countries is the first to assess the quality of internationalisation in compliance with current international quality assurance practices.

The methodology has been developed within the Erasmus+ project CeQuInt. The project consortium was composed of 14 partners from 11 countries, consisting of quality assurance agencies from Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Croatia, Germany (2), Finland, France (2), the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Spain (2), the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA ) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).