Our mission is to safeguard the standards and enhance the quality of Icelandic higher education and the management of research activities.

Welcome by the Chair

The Quality Board is an independent, international body, established in 2010 by the Ministry for Icelandic Higher Education to design and implement the “Quality Enhancement Framework” (QEF). QEF’s mission is to safeguard the standards and enhance the quality of Icelandic higher education and the management of research activities. The Quality Board is also periodically commissioned to conduct special reviews in focused areas of higher education and research.

As an affiliate member of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), all our processes are designed to be in line with international best practice, including the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015).

When the Quality Board was established, it decided that the Quality Enhancement Framework should be developed through extensive engagement with the sector and other stakeholders. Such ongoing engagement has been a key aspect of the Board’s operation ever since.

In keeping with this approach, this website has been designed with multiple audiences in mind including national and international students, the Icelandic universities, employers, quality assurance practitioners and international quality assurance agencies. You will find here the review reports of the universities, the documents that guide our work and a number of resources related to quality assurance.

We hope that you will find this site useful as a source of information.  We are currently preparing for the third cycle of the QEF which will run from 2024 – 2029 and much of the current documentation will be updated over the coming months. The website itself will also be developed, in part to improve ease of access to any support and guidance materials or key reports you may be looking for.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.

Professor Crichton Lang
Chair of the Quality Board
July 2023