Quality Enhancement: A New Step in a Risky Business? A Few Adumbrations on Its Prospect for Higher Education in Europe

This chapter examines quality enhancement and risk management as new stages in the dynamic of the Evaluative State. It develops an interpretation alternative to the usual predominantly technical and metrical perspectives of mainline literature on quality assurance and accreditation. Quality enhancement and risk management represent the third and fourth phases of the Evaluative State. Yet, national systems display marked variation in timing and rationale, and the emphasis and purpose they assign to quality assurance. Attention focuses on the variation between models developed in the UK, France and Portugal. Whilst neo-liberalism and the rigours of new public management are today held as generic in shaping quality mechanisms, this has not always been the case. Finally, possible consequences arising from quality enhancement and risk management are briefly explored.