We were the first to hear of it: there are serious plans for a European certificate on internationalisation, to lift national initiatives to the EU level. It is the European Consortium for Accreditation of higher education(ECA) that will be working on this from the start of July 2011.
The news was launched today at the special NVAO seminar about assessment of internationalisation and internationalisation as a distinctive quality.
For my international readers: NVAO (in Dutch: Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie) is the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders. It was established by international treaty and it ensures the quality of higher education in the Netherlands and Flanders.
The certificate is seen as a specific "reward" for good and excellent forms of internationalisation and is meant only for the happy few (they called it "the Champions league"). They are not looking for mass certification, we were told by the chairman of the ECA who made the announcement, Rolf Heusser.
The rationale for an ECA certificate was that international projects need a corresponding award. Besides, there is a high demand for such an award coming from the higher education institutions themselves. All this fits well with ECA aims, know-how and philosophy, which is the mutual recognition of accreditation and quality assurance decisions. Other aims of ECA are: mutual learning and disseminating best practices in accreditation as well as providing transparent information on quality and supporting internationalisation of institutions and students.
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