The ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of quality in Nordic higher education reforms

Quality in higher education has for many years been a vital policy concern across Europe. Quality reforms have been initiated in many, if not all, European countries, but the shape and scope of these reforms seem to vary. In this paper, the aim is to critically examine these reform ideas and how they are materialised in various instruments. The focus is on the Nordic countries and the paper addresses the conception of a Nordic model of higher education, by examining quality conceptions and reforms across these seemingly similar systems. The study is designed as a document analysis of White Papers in four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) from the last twenty years, and initial reflections suggest that the various Nordic countries have employed both different variations of policy instruments and there also seems to be a variation in reform intensiveness in recent decades.