The European Students’ Union (ESU) was one of the institutions participating in the formation of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the

European Higher Education Area (ESG) in 2005, which were amended in 2015(1) and are still used to this day. The ESGs serve as a core value of the Bologna process, assuring that the accredited institutions adhere to the same norms in higher education, and provide high quality of education across the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) member states. Based on the publication Bologna with Students Eyes 2020(3), it is visible that students are not nearly recognised enough in different aspects of higher education, however, in terms of Quality Assurance (QA), constant progress is evident. Additionally, since the launch of the Bologna Declaration in 1999, internationalisation has become one of the main goals of higher education, promoting diversity and shared knowledge cross-sector, impacting QA practices as well.

In 2009, ESU formed a Quality Assurance Student Experts’ Pool (QA Pool)(2), with the main goal to train, educate and nominate students as QA experts in various international external QA processes under partnering institutions. Since then, many changes happened within the EHEA to involve, not only checking educational standards in teaching, learning assessments and accessibility of higher education, but assuring internationalisation, diversity and inclusion as well. The ESGs mention diversity as one of their four main principles for QA in EHEA, and mention it can be achieved through a “student-centred approach to learning and teaching, embracing flexible learning paths and recognising competencies gained outside formal curricula. Higher education institutions themselves also become more diverse in their missions, mode of educational provision and cooperation, including growth of internationalisation, digital learning and new forms of delivery.” According to these principles, ESU has also changed its internal policy on social dimension, and the QA Pool amended its practices to assure the selection based on diversity rather than merit only.

In line with that, our mission is to analyse how ESU has, over the course of 14 years, improved its policies on diversity within the organisation and the QA Pool, and whether this is reflected in practice. Concretely, our research questions are:

Do ESU QA Pool’s policies assure the diversity of student experts in QA compared to other European higher education organisations with similar practices?

Is the diversity of the nominated QA student experts for reviews correlated with the changes in ESU QA Pool’s diversity policies?

Do student QA experts find that the European QA systems are diverse enough?

We aim to answer these questions by quantitatively analysing our QA Pool database and testing it against the changes in the diversity criteria for the experts’ selection. Additionally, we plan on doing qualitative research on available resources within the organisation to compare the diversity policies and practices of ESU in nominating experts compared to the bodies who also nominate experts for international external evaluations, such as The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), The European University Association (EUA) and the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE).

For the quantitative research, we are planning on collecting, grouping and analysing data available to us on the past membership periods in the ESU QA Pool, to isolate the information on the number of Pool members, the number of partnering institutions and the number of reviews per year. This information is then divided to the pre- ESG2015 period and to the post- ESG2015 period to evaluate the difference in the Pool members’ diversity affected by these two documents. The post- ESG2015 period would be analysed in several subperiods in which ESU’s Social Dimension policies changed to incorporate more diversity into its work to see if these changes impacted the work of the QA pool in terms of student recruitment, training and nominations. From the obtained data, we are interested to see whether the changes in policies were co-dependent (did they change simultaneously) and whether these policies were effective in practice: i.e. whether the application of new criteria for diversity assured higher diversity among the applicants to the calls and the nominated experts. When performing quantitative analysis, the following is considered diversity criteria: Regional balance; Gender balance; QA experience (national and international); Country of studies; Language skills; International experience (i.e. policy work, student representation). The qualitative research involves the analysis of ESU’s, ENQA’s, EUA’s and EURASHE’s work policies related to quality assurance and higher education in general. We will analyse whether the general policies of these institutions involve internationalisation and inclusion practices, and we will look at whether this is apparent and applied through their work on QA (by analysing specific recruitment and selection criteria). Finally, we aim to investigate whether the ESU QA Pool’s members find that the European QA landscape is diverse enough, and why do they think so. The responses are analysed based on the level of their experience and their engagement in the QA Pool, and presented in a short summary with suggestions on further improvements.

The authors expect that this research will provide the first singular evidence of how diverse QA expert student representation is within EHEA, and discuss whether the diversity of the experts is broad enough to assure shared knowledge and practices. We also hypothesise the reasons for the lack of diversity in some European regions, based on the findings in our research. Regarding our research questions and based on our past experience in QA on the European level, we expect the following outcomes: Although ESU’s Policy Papers strive toward higher equality, inclusion and diversity, the theoretical institutional adaptations are not passed down to the ESU QA Pool fast enough to create immediate changes in practice and reflect in the diversity of the nominated Pool members. In comparison to ENQA, EUA and EURASHE, students require more time to develop and implement desired practices. The increase in the number of reviews is positively correlated to the increase in the partnerships established between ESU and higher education stakeholders (QA agencies, higher education institutions). There is no significant correlation between the applied diversity criteria and the diversity of the nominated experts, when compared to the non-nominated experts. Student QA experts find that the European QA systems are diverse, but there is a difference in the training and the available opportunities for students to develop within their national contexts. This could be the limiting factor of their participation in QA in an international context, contributing toward the lack of diverse representation of students in QA within EHEA. Additionally, students studying in countries different from their country of origin, who were previously involved in QA in the national/international context more easily and readily involve in the QA in their country of studies.

1.Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). 2015. 2.European Students’ Union. Quality Assurance Student Experts Pool [Internet]. 2009. Available from: https://esu-online.org/pools/quality-assurance-student-experts-pool/ 3.European Students’ Union. Bologna with Students Eyes 2020 [Internet]. European Students’ Union; 2020. Available from: https://esu-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/BWSE2020-Publication_WEB2.pdf