What is DEQAR and what can I find in EQAR's database?

Updated

DEQAR is EQAR's database of higher education institutions and programmes that have been subject to external quality assurance, with direct access to the corresponding reports. Use it when you need to check whether a specific institution or programme has been reviewed, which agency carried out the review, and what the outcome was. According to EQAR's own site, the database currently holds 134,243 reports covering 5,192 institutions, and you can filter providers to narrow that set down.

What DEQAR contains

DEQAR sits alongside two other EQAR resources: the Register of quality assurance agencies and the Knowledge base of country information. Each answers a different question:

EQAR resource What it covers Typical use
Register Quality assurance agencies (QAAs) that substantially comply with the ESG Checking whether an agency is trustworthy
DEQAR (Database) Higher education institutions and programmes subject to external quality assurance, plus the reports Checking whether a specific institution or programme was reviewed, and with what result
Knowledge base National QA frameworks of EHEA countries and other information on QA in Europe Understanding how a country's quality assurance system is organised

The common framework behind all of this is the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the EHEA (ESG). Higher education in the European Higher Education Area is subject to regular external review by a quality assurance agency, and EQAR is the EHEA's official register of agencies that substantially comply with the ESG.

What you can do in DEQAR

  • Look up an institution or programme to see whether it has undergone external quality assurance.
  • Open the corresponding report rather than relying on a summary — DEQAR's stated purpose is easy access to the reports themselves.
  • Filter providers to work through the large volume of records (over 134,000 reports across more than 5,000 institutions) instead of browsing everything.
  • Cross-check the agency in the Register, since a report's value depends on whether the agency that produced it complies with the ESG.

How to use it in practice

  1. Start from the database entry for the institution or programme you care about.
  2. Confirm that a review exists and note which agency conducted it.
  3. Open the linked report to read the actual findings and any conditions or follow-up requirements.
  4. If you need context on the country's system — for example, whether the review is mandatory or how it fits national rules — move to the Knowledge base country information.
  5. If your question is about the agency rather than the institution, check the Register instead.

A concrete case: a student comparing two master's programmes in different EHEA countries can use DEQAR to confirm both were externally reviewed, then read each report to see whether either carried conditions. The database tells you a review happened and gives you the evidence; it does not rank institutions or tell you which programme to choose.

Limits worth knowing

DEQAR covers institutions and programmes that have been subject to external quality assurance — it is not a complete list of every institution in the EHEA, and absence from the database is not by itself a judgement about quality. The Register, similarly, lists agencies that substantially comply with the ESG; it is a register of agencies, not a ranking of institutions. For anything beyond what the reports and country information state, go back to the source documents themselves.