Quality
The University's Royal Charter, unlike those of other universities, provides for three sovereign bodies, the third one (in addition to the usual Council and Senate) being the Academic Advisory Council, which is a group of external academics that audits the academic staff.
When the national Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was created, the University felt it should join, even though - as Britain’s only independent University – it is markedly different from the state-funded universities that the QAA otherwise audits.
The University got "broad confidence" (the highest band) in its first QAA audit in 2003, but "limited confidence" in its last QAA audit in 2008. This poor assessment lead to criticism of the QAA by prominent Buckingham academics which were rebuffed by the QAA.
Read more about this topic: University Of Buckingham
Famous quotes containing the word quality:
“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“At first, he savored only the material quality of the sounds secreted by the instruments. And it had already been a great pleasure when, beneath the tiny line of the violin, slender, resistant, dense and driving, he noticed the mass of the piano’s part seeking to arise in a liquid splashing, polymorphous, undivided, level and clashing like the purple commotion of wave charmed and flattened by the moonlight.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.”
—Lester Bangs (1948–1982)