Georgia’s National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement has regained its registration with the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR), an official register within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework, nearly two years after the suspension fueled concerns over its feared negative impact on Georgian students.
The EQAR register, which emerged within the Bologna Process, brings together quality assurance agencies across Europe that have undergone external expert reviews. Being listed in the register is believed to strengthen the recognition and international comparability of higher education qualifications, thus enhancing academic opportunities for students and institutions in the relevant countries.
The Center’s registration in the EQAR was suspended in December 2024, following the 2023 visit of international experts that identified deficiencies in its compliance with European quality assurance standards. Critics feared at the time that losing the European status could damage the reputation of Georgian higher education and affect international mobility, joint and double-degree programs, foreign student enrollment, and university revenues.
In an October 6 statement, however, the Quality Enhancement Center said that Georgia regained the status “based on the results of the evaluation conducted by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).”
The international experts of ENQA, a framework operating within EHEA, conducted an in-depth review of changes made to Georgia’s higher education quality assurance system in 2024 and 2025, the statement said, noting that the changes were intended to bring the country’s quality assurance system and the center’s activities fully in line with European standards.
“According to the assessment of ENQA’s international experts and the decision of the EQAR Register Committee, the activities of the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement and the higher education quality assurance mechanisms operating in Georgia fully comply with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015),” the center said.
The center said renewed EQAR registration would support the internationalization of Georgia’s higher education system and strengthen international confidence in the country’s quality assurance mechanisms.
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