Government bodies and higher education institutions (HEIs) are to an increasing extent making use of
statistics1 to monitor, control and enhance the quality and relevance of higher education. While growing
amounts of data offer new opportunities for organizational control and learning, external quality assurance
agencies (EQAAs) have also experienced challenges in finding usable indicators of quality and relevance.
Within this context, the present paper will describe the statistics used by the EQAAs of four Nordic
countries.
The project is funded by The Nordic Council of Ministers for Education and was carried out by a working
group within the Danish Accreditation Institution.