ABSTRACT
Throughout the world, the political and popular profile of higher education has never been higher. Aware of the growing needs of the knowledge economy and the knowledge society, governments have sought to increase participation in higher education in order to meet the demand for knowledge workers and have encouraged the development of innovation and technology transfer in order to create competitive economic advantage. Monitoring may also be used as a device in order to inform, influence and drive change in higher education. Sometimes change may be an explicit objective; on other occasions, the desire to encourage change is more implicit or may even be disguised. In continental Europe, therefore, and, in practice, in other parts of the world, including in particular Latin America, monitoring has been challenged mainly as an agent of change and less from concern about institutional control.
