ABSTRACT
There are 36 public universities and two small private ones in Australia. The public universities make up the Australian Unified National System, which replaced, under the Labour Government reform programme of the late 1980s, the binary system of 19 universities and a much larger number of degree-granting institutes. Most of the institutes were colleges of advanced education. Higher education institutions in Australia have always been concerned with quality, though in the early days it was referred to as maintaining standards. The Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE) was established in November 1992 as a non-statutory ministerial advisory committee to make recommendations to the government on the allocation of funds to universities able to demonstrate effective quality assurance practices and excellent outcomes. The impact of the 1993-95 cycle of quality audit on the quality of Australian higher education was seen to be positive, especially on teaching.
