Romania was the first country in South-East Europe to set up a national quality assurance (QA) framework for higher education and a public agency to continuously monitor the quality of the Romanian higher education programmes. The current national QA body, the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) was established in 2006.

Its mission is to conduct external evaluations of the quality of education offered by higher education institutions and other organisations providing higher education study programmes, operating in Romania. ARACIS provides evaluation and accreditation of both higher education institutions and programmes, for public and private universities. Since the establishment of ARACIS in 2006, over 74 universities went through an institutional evaluation and over 4,200 study programs have been evaluated.

Starting with 2009, ARACIS is a member of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and was included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR). Its working methods and external methodology are thus in line with the revised European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ESG).