Accountability in Western Europe: Shift ing Quality Assurance Paradigms

Quality has always been a concern in higher education. However, accountability, of which quality assurance is one aspect, is a fairly recent phenomenon in Western Europe, most probably because, historically, its sector was relatively small in some countries, or composed chiefl y of public institutions or again, managed centrally by ministries, especially on the continent. Many countries did not see the need to evaluate higher education, which, in such a context, would have been tantamount to evaluating the ministries.