The policy literature makes strong assumptions about the impact of quality assurance on the performance of higher education. (Harvey and Williams, 2010). In Romania, like in many other countries, quality assurance is assumed to be in the interest of academics and students, leading to improvement of both education and research. It is increasingly being recognised, however, that the effect of quality assurance may not be so straightforward. While universities have been operating quality assurance for over a decade, quality assurance is still not considered ‘embedded and functional’ in the ‘core of universities’ (Păunescu, Florian, and Hâncean 2012, 335).

To explain why quality assurance may not lead to increased performance, Romanian observers often employ rather general cultural critiques, pointing to the lack of internalisation of 'foreign' values. Romanian society is seen to create ‘forms without substance’, ‘phantoms without bodies’ or ‘pretentions without a foundation’ (Cârlan 2008, 174). In contrast to such ‘culturalist’ explanations, we aim to argue in this presentation that the problems with quality assurance are related to how these are being used as a political technology. As such, a more specific understanding of the changing power relations within Romanian universities is needed.

The central research question is of this paper is ‘how do universities in Romania perform quality assurance?’ In answering this question, two meanings of the term ‘performance’ will be discussed. In the dominant usage in quality assurance discourse, ‘performance’ indicates the new focus on improving standards or improving quality. In its second meaning, however, ‘performance' can indicate a ‘play’ by actors’ on a stage as administrators, academics and students take on various new roles (managers, producers, consumers, etc.) (Talbot, 2000).

We analyse quality assurance as simultaneously being a tool of ‘market-making’, of a ‘neo-liberal governmentality’ or of the development of ‘audit culture’ in higher education (Deem, 1998, Shore and Wright, 1999, Apple, 2005). These three rationalities all operate in Romanian higher education, but not necessarily in a straightforward way. Indeed, we believe that ‘quality’ itself remains a highly contested concept, which translates in several notions of what ‘quality assurance’ is and how it should be carried out (Harvey and Green, 1993). As a result, quality assurance is employed with various purposes, at various levels and by very different actors.

Although this line of inquiry may seem overly specific, we believe that Romania may be an interesting case for an understanding of quality assurance in Central and Eastern Europe more generally. Importantly, it was the first country of the ‘East’ to adopt a quality assurance system, thereby becoming an example for other countries in the region (Tomusk, 2000). Moreover, Romania has played an important role in disseminating the idea of quality assurance in the region as it hosted the UNESCO-CEPES institute and more recently the Bologna Secretariat.

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