Douglas is President of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). With members and affiliates in 45 countries, ENQA is the official recognised consultative body for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area. He has played a leading role in partnership working with other regional quality bodies in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

He is a former Chief Executive of the UK’s independent Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) whose role was to ensure academic standards are maintained and that student learning opportunities are of the highest quality across the four UK nations. Douglas held Executive roles at the Agency for 20 years, leading it through a period of significant change, developing the agency’s support for higher education in responding to Covid-19 and advised the four governments of the UK throughout this period.

In 40 years of working in higher education, he has championed the role that students can play in assuring and improving the quality and shaping the governance of their institutions. He led QAA’s work to engage students at all levels of quality assurance of UK higher education.

Douglas holds a number of non-executive director roles in education and regulation including being a Board member of the University of Law, South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, the British University in Egypt, the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications, Qualifications Wales, and Cilex Legal Regulation, and is an Advisory Board member of both Future Learn and the Lifelong Education Institute.

In recognition of his work, he has been awarded Honorary Doctorates in Education by Robert Gordon University in 2023 and the University of Buckingham in 2025.