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Internal quality assurance (IQA) has expanded with internationalization, yet it is commonly operationalized as compliance and rarely specified in terms of mechanisms that plausibly affect student learning and employability, especially outside Western systems. Addressing this gap, the study examines how IQA is implemented in Beijing universities and the conditions under which it can support desired outcomes. We conducted 43 semi-structured interviews with administrators, IQA officers, municipal regulators, and international accreditation experts and analyzed them using reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis identifies seven interlocking mechanisms (cultural synergy, adaptive accreditation, transnational collaboratives, student-centric metrics, holistic digital integration, sustainability alignment, and global competency frameworks) and surfaces implementation frictions (bureaucratic path-dependence, data-capability gaps, workload constraints). We theorize adaptive IQA as aligning locally salient value commitments with internationally legible routines (e.g. outcomes-based mapping, dashboards, participatory feedback). Adaptive IQA is most plausibly consequential when governance alignment, data capabilities, and collaborative accreditation/benchmarking co-occur. The study contributes a mechanism-grounded account from a major non-Western system and specifies policy-relevant conditions for shifting IQA from compliance to enhancement.
Lv et al. (Thu,) studied this question.