The Internal quality assurance as an instrument for the integration and improving of higher education :

The aim of this work is to identify the main factors which influence in the implementation and development of Quality Assurance Systems in higher education institutions (HEIs), and compare different regions with similar changes. In such scenary, it becomes a necessary task try to understand the processes that have led to the current education policy as well as the changes in the vision which the European Community (EC) has had on higher education over time. In this vein, higher education and education in general have moved from a marginal location towards the center of the concerns in almost all over the world. So far, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) do not work in a vacuum, but they are an important part of today's knowledge society. Through out a multiple case studies and two indepth case studies (Qualitative Methodology), was analyzed the way in which different internal quality assurance systems (IQAS) have been implemented and developed in six universities, [three from the Euroepan Union (EU) and three from Latin America (LA)]. From the observation of these cases in the field of quality assurance in higher education, we propose the use of some categories that provide an overview of the quality assurance as a policy domain within which policies are formulated. Derived from literature review were identified three big lines of work related with quality assurance issues in higher education; historical analysis; theoretical approaches, and political change. The latter has served as guideline to guide our work within the quality assurance in HEIs, particularly in reference to recurrent practices to evaluate the quality of some of the HEIs activities and the structures associated with these practices (Vlǎsceanu et al. 2007). In this proposal we follow a comparative approach to the political process, the outputs and outcomes of policies that facilitate discovering empirical relationships between variables, particularly in the field of public policies. Far to find answers, the results take us to consider some questions about possible patterns or guidelines associated to processes like the Bologna's for instance and compared with the Latin-American situation. This assignment speaks of quality assurance as a tool for the integration and improvement of higher education, also considers the quality assurance within the policy domain, as well as its different forms of implementation resulting from a national policy or transnational and whose impact is reflected in the actions taken by the HEI's. Even though is not a prescriptive framework, the EFQM excellence model perspective, allows to identifying the basic elements which compose the structure of QA system which is based on the application of the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) towards educational institutions. Whatever the origin of these new activities, no doubt the normative framework derived from the Bologna Declaration has set some trends of accreditation in Europe. It is clear that, in one way or another, this has influenced the development of varied quality assurance outlines in Latin America, as is demonstrated by the development of the QA actions identified on presented cases