ABSTRACT
The Academic Audit Unit (AAU) provides external and independent assurance that UK universities have adequate and effective mechanisms and structures for monitoring, maintaining and improving the quality of their teaching. As its first Director, the author describes the origins, scope, and method of the Unit which was established by the Committee of ViceChancellors and Principals of the United Kingdom (CVCP) in 1990. He continues with an account of the Unit’s first eight months’ work, to the completion, in May 1991, of a series of five pilot audits, and ends with some comments on proposals for future quality assurance arrangements in British higher education.
