Opening Up Higher Education: Quality Assurance for Innovative Approaches

Abstract

The rapidly changing world of the 21st century is putting ever-greater pressure on people to acquire the knowledge and skills that will help them live productive and fulfilling lives. Young people realise that higher education is the key to good work opportunities and those already employed understand the need constantly to upgrade their competencies. All this is creating both challenges and opportunities for higher education institutions (HEIs), which are adopting innovative approaches in order to open up to these new demands. HEIs are becoming more 'open to people, open to places, open to methods and open to ideas', in the words of the slogan of the first open university, established almost 50 years ago.