ABSTRACT
The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) at university level is a formidable auditing body with the power to do serious hurt to any institution it judges to be out of line. The grade or rating it gives any department is considered a public record of the quality of its work. If the QAA insists that universities spray their activities with the colour of learning outcomes, then it is not surprising that that is the colour reflected back to them. Academics may groan but they soon learn to describe what they do in the requisite language. When used properly, learning outcomes are a sensible and effective part of teaching and learning, but they have been hijacked by the auditors and turned into a device for monitoring the performance of teachers. Almost all learning outcomes are an attempt to express 'knowledge how' in a set of statements - 'knowledge that'.
