INQAAHE Forum 2024
Transforming Society: Social Reponsibility trough Quality Assurance of Tertiary Education
June 11, 2024
Roundtable
Sub-theme 2: Bridging the gap to quality education for all
How transnational education can serve to widen access to quality international education
Transnational education (TNE), as the provision of education programmes in other countries, can play a crucial role in widening access to international education, by helping meeting demand from students who might be unable or unwilling to travel internationally. However, TNE still faces important recognition challenges, which ultimately rests on consideration of quality and quality assurance. This round-table session aims to facilitate discussion about the value of TNE as means to meet SDG4, the quality assurance and recognition challenges it faces, and possible shared solutions.
This session will be highly interactive. It will start by setting out briefly (no more than 10 minutes) the context as outlined in the above description. This context setting will focus on the value of TNE, its recognition challenges due to a diversity of quality assurance approaches and views about what quality TNE should look like, existing international policy documents (such as the UNESCO/OECD Guidelines, the UNESCO Global Convention, and the INQAAHE International Standards and Guidelines), the importance of cross-border dialogue and cooperation, and a recent concrete tool developed by the presenter to inform international benchmarking of TNE.
Delegates will then be asked to share in small groups their views and experiences. The discussion will be structured around four main areas:
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Benefits and value: What do delegates view as the main benefits and value of TNE?
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Quality and quality assurance: What do delegates view as the main challenges for safeguarding the quality of TNE, and for its quality assurance and recognition?
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Good practice and solutions: What is the delegates’ experience with quality assuring TNE, either in-bound or out-bound? Any good practice to recommend? Any suggested solutions to the existing recognition challenges?
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Cross-border cooperation: What measures and initiative would delegates suggest to foster cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of TNE, with a specific view to addressing difference in views and practices, quality assurance gaps, and regulatory burden?
Facilitated by:
Fabrizio Trifiro
Dr Fabrizio Trifiró is Head of Stakeholder Engagement and International Quality Reviews at Ecctis, the agency that manages the qualification recognition function (UK ENIC) on behalf of the UK Government. He is also a member of the British Accreditation Council (BAC) Accreditation Committee.
Fabrizio joined Ecctis in 2019 after over 10 years with the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) where he led on the quality assurance of UK TNE and the international student experience. In 2022 Fabrizio supported as an independent expert the Office for Students (OfS) in developing their international engagement work around TNE.
Fabrizio is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Network of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (INQAAHE), and an independent member of the Governing Board of Wrexham University in Wales.
With two decades of experience in international higher education and its regulation Fabrizio has acted as independent consultant to a number of quality assurance bodies and international organisations.
If you have any question about the event, please do not hesitate to contact INQAAHE and/or the Forum host, ARACIS.
