On 27th of May 2016, an important milestone in promoting and aligning professional accreditation on the global level was reached.

The European Alliance of Subject Specific and Professional Accreditation (EASPA), represented by its president Dr. Iring Wasser, and the Asian Pacific Quality Assurance Network (APQN) , represented by its outgoing president Dr. Jonathan Patil, signed a cooperation agreement with the ultimate aim of creating an Asian Alliance of Subject Specific and Professional Accreditation (AASPA) in the presence of around 200 leading representatives of the Asian Pacific Higher Education and Quality Assurance Management Sector.

This important step constitutes a further breakthrough in the quest to foster academic and professional mobility for students and graduates on the basis of agreed continental learning outcomes in the global HE sector and is a continuation of important developments which took place over the course of the past five years.

EASPA was founded on November 29th 2011 in Düsseldorf. Today EASPA is the voice of most European disciplinary Networks in QA of HE in the European Higher Education Area, representing disciplines in practically all STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas as well as medicine, music and public administration. In its so called Düsseldorf Declaration, the political and educational aspirations are clearly formulated.

In 2013, EASPA and the American Alliance of Specialized Accreditors (ASPA), a network representing more than 60 professional accreditation networks in the United States reached a cooperation agreement, which in 2015 was supplemented by an memorandum of understanding (MoU) between EASPA and the Global TUNING Academy.  On the basis of the present new MoU, the Asian continent will in the future join the existing agreements in and between Europe and the United States.