International
10 years of Franco-Argentine cooperation between Hcéres and CONEAU
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As long-standing partners, the two national agencies, Hcéres in France and CONEAU in Argentina, renewed their cooperation agreement at the end of 2022. To mark the occasion, a series of online conferences was organised throughout 2023 to share the experience of the two agencies in the evaluation of higher education, and an article was written. Here are the key points of Franco-Argentine cooperation in quality assurance.
France and Argentina, longstanding partners
The first cooperation agreement between Hcéres and CONEAU was signed in 2013 and then renewed twice. The last 10 years have been marked by respective visits by the two agencies, the latest of which led Hcéres to take part in the International Higher Education Fair in Argentina (FIESA) in November 2022. As part of its international accreditations, Hcéres also recently evaluated and accredited the Universidad Abierta Interamericana (UAI) in Argentina.
Hcéres and CONEAU have many points in common. As independent national agencies, they play a leading role in the quality assurance of higher education in their respective countries. Both agencies periodically evaluate higher education institutions (every 5 years for Hcéres and 6 years for CONEAU) as well as programmes at bachelor/pre-grado, master/grado, and doctorate levels for Hcéres. Hcéres is also responsible for evaluating research units and research organisations in France.
July 2023 webinar between Hcéres and CONEAU, involving around thirty participants from the two agencies and external guests.
2023, a year of cross-learning for Hcéres and CONEAU
A series of three webinars was organised throughout the year:
- Exchange of experience on the evaluation of joint programmes
- Regional quality assurance systems
- New challenges in higher education evaluation
Find out more about bilateral activities with CONEAU in 2023 in this article.
In addition to bilateral cooperation, CONEAU and Hcéres are strongly committed to the development of evaluation policies in their respective regional spheres. The two agencies will shortly be working together on a new project aimed at aligning quality standards between the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and the Principles of Good Practice (PGP) developed by SIACES.