Implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines developed by The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A case study on Lund University

Abstract: The thesis studies the situation within Lund University in relation to the implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) developed by The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). The aim of the study is to answer the following research question “How have Lund University implemented the European Standards and Guidelines developed by The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in its ongoing quality assurance work?” In order to gather information on the state of implementation of the ESG the study conducts a number of interviews with centralized actors involved in the implementation process at Lund University in relation to two confrontational theoretical perspectives, the top-down perspective and the bottom-up perspective as well as looking at the impact of network aspects of the implementation process. As one of the first studies of a higher education institutions implementation of the ESG within the Swedish higher education area – after a number of studies being conducted in the central and eastern European countries – on the implementation of the ESG, the study will present results on the analysis of a Swedish higher education institutions implementation of supra-national standard and guidelines.