Student engagement in higher education quality assurance is promoted globally, yet implementation varies and questions remain about how students contribute meaningfully. This study examines student assessment literacy, defined as the knowledge and skills required for participation in quality assurance processes. Drawing on interviews with students, teachers and administrators at Swedish universities, it explores how this literacy is enacted. The findings suggest that student assessment literacy includes understanding the institutional context, representing peers, preparing for and contributing to meetings and adopting a partnership-oriented stance. These competencies develop through participation, supported by training and institutional encouragement and build on the inherent expertise that students bring, namely their perspective on teaching and learning. The findings further indicate that student engagement enhances the quality of education and supports student development. Challenges include hierarchical dynamics, balancing cooperation with critique, ensuring credible peer representation, managing language barriers and a declining willingness among students to engage.
Lebanon lacks a national quality assurance agency for its higher education system, resulting in fragmented, poorly coordinated quality governance. Consequently, private universities have developed internal quality assurance systems to maintain credibility and accountability amid economic and political instability. This article examines how internal quality assurance operates in such governance and how it shapes teaching, learning and institutional practices. Based on twenty interviews and institutional document analysis from two Lebanese universities, this article examines whether internal quality assurance promotes genuine improvement or merely substitutes for absent external regulation. The analysis focuses on leadership commitment and stakeholder engagement as mediating factors in the implementation of quality. Without national coordination, internal quality assurance risks reinforcing inequalities and encouraging bureaucratic compliance rather than meaningful change. The Lebanese case highlights both the adaptability and weakness of quality assurance in weak-governance contexts, where fragmented systems hinder sector-wide coherence and accountability.
Higher education institutions increasingly rely on internal quality assurance to enhance teaching, learning and accountability, yet effective implementation remains challenging across contexts. This study examines how contextual, procedural and cultural factors shape the implementation of internal quality assurance in practice, rather than focusing solely on system design. Using mixed methods, the study triangulates expert interviews with survey data from students, alumni, faculty and employers at two higher education institutions in contrasting quality assurance environments: the Netherlands and Azerbaijan. Findings show that challenges persist across different levels of system maturity and stem less from the absence of formal structures than from bureaucratic pressures, limited stakeholder engagement, weak feedback loops and fragile quality cultures. The study identifies reducing bureaucracy, strengthening communication and making improvement actions visible as key enablers of enhancement-oriented internal quality assurance. It contributes to quality assurance scholarship by positioning it as a relational, enacted process dependent on trust and shared commitment.
Student representation in external quality assurance is a mandatory requirement in European higher education systems and the involvement of students in such processes is seen as important for the legitimacy of evaluations, accreditations and audits. However, there is limited knowledge about the role students play in external quality assurance panels and how they perceive their involvement. This study seeks to address this gap. It is based on a survey of students who routinely take part in external quality assurance exercises across Europe. The survey shows that students perceive themselves as representatives, partners or even experts. Students' multiple roles and their integration into panel practices indicate that quality assurance panels function as a form of extended collegiality. In the discussion, the paper outlines the key conditions for integrating students into external quality assurance and not least, how students' expertise in such processes may be enhanced.
