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 courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)