Academic Quality Assurance: Global Imperatives and National Responses

Abstract

This paper reviews the reasons for the increasing international prominence of quality assurance in higher education. It identifies the aims of academic quality assurance, and describes a model of the levels at which academic quality assurance systems operate. It discusses the widening range of activities encompassed by academic quality assurance, and reports on some of the challenges currently facing the formation and implementation of academic quality assurance policies and practices in England. It concludes with a summary of the opportunities for developing the academic quality assurance systems of Bangladesh.