About IEP

Consistent with institutional autonomy, the mission of the Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) is to support higher education institutions and systems in developing their strategic leadership and capacity to manage change through a process of voluntary institutional evaluations.

The programme was launched in 1994 with the aim of supporting institutions in fulfilling their responsibility for assessing and improving the quality of their own activities. With experience gained from over 456 evaluations carried out over two decades, we continue to offer evaluations based on the founding principles of the programme. As an independent quality assurance agency, IEP is listed on the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) and is a member of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). For this purpose IEP undergoes external review coordinated by ENQA every five years.

In addition, IEP has its own Internal Quality Procedures and a Complaints Criteria and Procedure in order to continuously improve the programme and ensure that evaluations are carried out in a fair and accountable way.

IEP 30th anniversary celebrations

In 2024-25, EUA’s Institutional Evaluation Programme celebrates 30 years of activity with a special anniversary publication proudly looking at IEP’s past achievements and bright future. You can download the publication here.

IEP Pool of Experts

All evaluations are carried out on a peer-review basis by teams drawn from the IEP pool of experts, which has around 60 members from across Europe. This includes current and former rectors and vice-rectors, students and senior higher education professionals. Each evaluation team is carefully composed on the basis of your institution’s priorities and profile, while bringing a diversity of expertise and backgrounds. All evaluation team members adhere to the Charter of conduct for pool members.

In this article, Sokratis Katsikas from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology shares his experience of being a member for over 15 years.

Steering Committee

All our work is overseen by an independent steering committee, which has full responsibility for the development, monitoring and operation of the Programme. The current Steering Committee is composed of the following members:

• Luc Hittinger, Professor, University of Paris Est Creteil Val de Marne, France (chair)
• Lewis Purser, Director Learning & Teaching and Academic Affairs, Irish Universities Association, Ireland
• Simona Lache, Vice-Rector, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania
• Melita Kovacevic, Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Raymond Smith, Higher Education Consultant, United Kingdom
• Brian Norton, Professor, TU Dublin & Head of Energy Research,Tyndall National Institute, Ireland
• Jānis Vētra , Professor and former rector, Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia
• Irina Duma, European Students' Union
• Ivanka Popović, EUA Board, IEP Steering Committee ex officio member