Quality assurance: What it was, is, and should be

Bert van der Zwaan’s academic-professional career has developed in parallel with the system of quality assurance in higher education in the Netherlands. From 1986 onwards, Dutch higher education developed a system of evaluation of education and research in response to the government’s willingness to grant more autonomy to the higher education sector and to higher education institutions. In this contribution, I will restrict myself to the quality assurance in education.