ABSTRACT
The Dutch government is becoming less interventionist in its policy for higher education, and has encouraged the higher education institutions to develop their own quality assurance mechanisms. As a result, the universities have collaborated to introduce an external assessment scheme. This involves regular peer review, by visiting committees of experts who evaluate clusters of related disciplines across the universities. The Inspectorate of Higher Education scrutinizes the process and output of this quality assurance scheme, and the conclusions of its first meta-evaluation are reported here. In Chapter 8 Dr Vroeijenstijn offers the universities’ response to some of the points raised by the inspectorate.
