The concept of quality within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): dimensions and discourses

Abstract

According to national concerns, since the signing of the Bologna Declaration, the search for quality guarantee has been one focus of attention of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This concern, shared by different stakeholders involved in higher education improvement, has been reinforced by several communiqués on the advances made in these processes, as well as the challenges still to be faced. In this sense, from the conceptualization of what quality implies and taking into account the important role of discourse in the implementation of ways to view reality, and consequently, in social transformation processes, this chapter offers an analysis of these different dimensions of quality underlying EHEA discourses.This analysis has enabled us to notice that within the framework of the two main tendencies of quality, discourses promote an excision between quality and equity, and that the latter, though present in the different communiqués resulting from ministerial meetings, is still listed within the framework of social responsibility and that little progress towards it can be verified. This calls for a revision of this conception based on understanding education not as a product but as a right.