Quality Assurance Agency For Higher Education
The stated misson of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is to 'safeguard standards and improve the quality of UK higher education'. Established in 1997 through the transfer of functions and staff from the former Higher Education Quality Council and the quality assessment divisions of HEFCE and HEFCW, this independent agency works to ensure that higher education qualifications in the United Kingdom (UK) are of a sound standard. It protects the public interest by checking how universities and colleges maintain their academic standards and quality. This work is supported by a range of guidance developed in cooperation with the higher education sector, principal among which is the UK Quality Code for Higher Education (the Quality Code).
QAA is the body entrusted with advising the Privy Council on which institutions should be granted degree awarding powers and the right to be called a university. Since 2011 QAA has been designated by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to conduct educational oversight of higher education providers, to enable them to apply for 'highly trusted sponsor' status under UKBA Tier 4 regulations. Providers having, or acquiring, this status are entitled to recruit overseas students into the UK.
QAA also regulates the Access to Higher Education Diploma, a qualification that enables individuals without A-levels or the usual equivalent to enter higher education. It does this by monitoring the Access Validating Agencies that award the Diploma.
QAA's mission to safeguard standards and improve quality is supported by four strategic aims, which may be summarised as follows: to address the needs of students and be valued by them; to safeguard standards in an increasingly diverse sector; to drive improvements; and to improve public understanding of UK higher education.
Read more about Quality Assurance Agency For Higher Education: Structure and Funding, History
Famous quotes containing the words quality, assurance, agency, higher and/or education:
“There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“For the most part we think that there are few degrees of sublimity, and that the highest is but little higher than that which we now behold; but we are always deceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale and fade away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Do we honestly believe that hopeless kids growing up under the harsh new rules will turn out to be chaste, studious, responsible adults? On the contrary, by limiting welfare, job training, education and nutritious food, won’t we plant the seeds for another bumper crop of out-of-wedlock moms, deadbeat dads and worse?”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)