Open Access

Michael Hoelscher, Susan Harris-Huemmert, Justin J. W. Powell, Johanna Witte

• This article provides a review of concepts of quality and excellence in higher education. It sketches the perceptions and development of quality in the German higher education and science system since the beginning of the 20th century, and related changes in approaches to quality assurance and development. Special attention is given to the Bologna process and the Excellence Initiative. The article discusses challenges for research management and ad-ministration as well as institutional research as emerging functions and professional roles. It critiques the trend towards excessive and one-sided quantitative measurement of quality in higher education and science, and outlines perspectives for future research and policy development in the field. Three key fields of tension identified are: (1) uses and merits of quantitative versus qualitative measures of quality, (2) the academic conceptualisation of quality as excellence versus the political-economic conceptualisation as impact or relevance, and (3) an individualistic versus holistic approach to quality assessment. The article proposes understanding performance as value added rather than in absolute terms, accounting for diverse conditions and starting points.