The presentation starts with a digression on the meanings of internationalisation and how it has changed since the Middle Ages, defines Cross-Border Higher Education (CBHE) and presents a possible typology. The quality problems that may result from CBHE are presented as well as developments to protect consumers, including the UNESCO/OECD guidelines for Quality Provision of CBHE. This is followed by a presentation of the attempts for liberalising the provision of CBHE, including those in the framework of the GATS agreements and the European Services Directive and a presentation of the recent report by ENQA on CBHE and the new document of the European Commission on Quality Assurance, including developments on the Services Directive. At last the problems created by the development of MOOCs are considered. It concludes presenting questions to be analysed to better understand the problems CBHE may create.

Author Profile(s)
Professor Alberto Amaral holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Porto and a PhD in Physical-Chemistry from the University of Cambridge. He was dean of the School of Sciences of University of Porto for seven years and rector of the same university from 1986 to 1998. From 1998 to 2008 he was the director of the Research Centre on Higher Education Policies and in 2009 he became the president of the executive board of the Portuguese quality assurance agency.

He is member of the editorial board of Quality Assurance in Education, Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development and the Springer series Higher Education Dynamics. He is editor or author of a number of books, the most recent ones being Higher Education in Portugal 1974-2009, A Nation, a Generation (Springer), Quality Assurance in Higher Education, Contemporary Debates, Higher Education and Quality Assurance: Commerce, The Service Directive and Governing Higher Education and Analysing European Policy Implementation: The Bologna Process (all in Palgrave MacMillan). He is editor of a book Markets in Higher Education: Rhetoric or Reality? (Springer) translated to Chinese. He has also published a large number of papers in international journals.