Quality Assurance in Higher Education and the Link to Internationalisation Millenium

Quality and internationalisation: a problem definition Internationalisation of higher education seems to be strongly related to the aim to improve the quality of higher education. The idea that internationalisation should not be seen as an end in itself but as a means for quality enhancement has been the basis of many policy documents. In the 1980s publications of the OECD presented the quality perspective in particular in relation to the expected qualitative impact of the presence of foreign students on the teaching and learning process and on the institution’s curriculum and services (Ebuchi, 1989). In the Maastricht Treaty (1992) the articles which provide the basis for Community action in higher education reflect the aim of improving the quality of education through co-operation between the member states of the European Union. Also national policies for internationalisation of higher education generally display the quality objective (Kalvermark & Van der Wende, 1997) and so do many institutional policy documents on internationalisation. Statements on the relationship between internationalisation and quality are usually based on the assumption or expectation that international co-operation and the exchange of individual students, teachers or researchers add to the critical mass, allow for mutual learning, for a comparison and synthesis of best approaches and practices, for cross-cultural understanding, for foreign language acquisition, etc. It is at the individual, the project, the institutional and even the system level that this international co-operation and exchange is expected to contribute to the quality of processes and outcomes