Institutional Response to the Swedish Model of Quality Assurance

The paper presents an evaluation of the Swedish model of quality assurance of higher education in the light of the response of institutions to quality audits as seen in 27 quality audit reports and 19 follow-up interviews. Against this background, the authors discuss the relationship between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches to internal quality assurance and the need for more professionalisation in quality work. We suggest that with growing professionalisation more limited result-oriented audits could replace the present full-scale institutional audits.