More and more German students spend time at a foreign partner university in order to acquire linguistic and intercultural competences. Achieving these objectives cannot be taken for granted, however, as results from study abroad research and voices from higher education indicate (cf. Deardoff 2015, Finell 2015). Political decisions and recommendations consider quality assur-ance issues for study periods abroad mostly from a formal and regulative perspective, but ap-parently, they do not sufficiently consider the actual outcome. The contribution presents results from a document analysis of strategic documents, such as mission statements, target agreements and development plans (cf. Hoffmann 2018, Prior 2003), which is part of an on-going cooperative doctoral project at TU Darmstadt and TH Aschaffenburg in Germany. Based on a qualitative approach, the doctoral project explores the quality assurance of linguistic and intercultural competences in study abroad contexts with a special focus on German Technical Universities and Technical Universities of Applied Sciences, 36 institutions in 2020. These organisations form varieties of their respective type of higher ed-ucation institution. They are characterised by a strong STEM affiliation in both teaching and research. (Foreign) Languages as well as intercultural competences are rather considered as profile-enhancing soft skills. The first part of the study consisted of a qualitative content analy-sis of strategic documents of 33 German Technical HEIs, using MAXQDA software (cf. Mayring 2015, Rädiker & Kuckartz 2019). The analysis focuses on the strategic aims in these central policy documents, which present prospects for any further quality assurance of study abroad contexts.

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