The importance of quality assurance in the development of extra-occupational courses of study

Quality assurance is a necessary benchmark in order to identify high quality offers on the further education market. Quality assurance could be described as an important factor to reach potential lifelong learners, who want to start or to continue higher education. This paper shows the intermediate result of a research project, in which nine extra-occupational study and certificate programmes will be (re-)developed. The project focuses on the STEM-subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and preliminary results of a sub-study on quality management are presented in this paper. It refers to universities and companies and tries to identify the expectations of those two stakeholder groups on quality in part-time studies. The goal is to improve an already developed and tailor -made quality management system in the area of continuing academic education in the STEM-subjects, which consists of ten quality standards regarding the course and programme or the organisational level.