ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the cross and international perspectives on benchmarking where it already exists, and traces the higher education developments of recent years that may be influential in the emergence of such standards in other parts of the world. It is widely believed that the concept of benchmarking in the United States (US) originated in the early 1980s at the Xerox Corporation, due to increasing competition within the market. By the early 1990s, Australia was only slightly behind the US in its business benchmarking practices, and in the past eight years there has been an increased emphasis on quality assurance and accountability in higher education. The fundamental difference in quality assurance practice between higher education in Australia and in many other countries was that Australia then took into account both outcomes and the standard of internal quality assurance procedures. It is known that the government intends to introduce 'quantitative Pis and benchmarks'.
