European higher education faces significant challenges. The European Commission, in a series of recent strategy papers, has highlighted these challenges – greatly expanding the student population, raising quality and aligning teaching and learning more closely to wider societal and labour market needs; adapting to globalisation and the huge growth in higher education students and institutions across the world, challenging Europe's position as a world leader in education; and improving and widening the delivery of higher education by harnessing new technologies such as MOOCs and virtual or blended learning.

HEIs have the ultimate responsibility for the quality of their offering (setting, monitoring and renewing their quality goals through 'internal' quality assurance). They are supported by external agencies (QAA) which assess quality standards, evaluating institutions, accrediting programmes or benchmarking performance against other HEIs ('external' quality assurance).
But public authorities have a duty to ensure that the quality of individual institutions, and of their higher education system as a whole, are fit for purpose. A framework of national and European tools and cooperation enhances trust across systems. Quality assurance mechanisms
are therefore essential to help institutions and policy makers to make a success of their reforms.

The present is a report from the EC to the EU Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee as well to the committee of teh Regions. It  follows the first published in 20095, responding to the invitation from the European Parliament and Council in 2006 to report on progress in quality assurance. It highlights the potential for quality assurance to play a more active role in supporting reform at system and institutional levels and proposes EU actions to support institutions and Member States.