ABSTRACT
When the UK's Academic Audit Unit (AAU) was established in 1990, one of its terms of reference was ‘to consider and review the universities' mechanisms for monitoring and promoting the academic standards which are necessary for achieving their stated aims and objectives’ (Williams, 1992). When the HEQC succeeded the AAU, the phrase ‘academic Standards' became ‘academic quality and Standards' (HEQC, 1993). When New Zealand's AAU was established in 1993, several of the UK's terms of reference were copied, including the phrase ‘quality and Standards'. In April 1994, the then UK Secretary of State for Education invited the higher education sector to give greater attention to the comparability of academic standards. This statement resulted in the HEQC's paying explicit attention to standards, and carrying out the Graduate Standards Programme (HEQC, 1997), which led to the QAA's current work on benchmarking threshold standards (QAA, March 1998).
