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. The colleges of advanced education were amalgamated with the universities. One example is the de-establishment of the multi-campus Brisbane College of Advanced Education, with one campus joining the nearby Griffith University, and the others the Queensland Institute of Technology. In 1991, the government released a report which suggested a quality assurance system where universities produce their own missions and objectives and assess quality in their own terms. The Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education 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.
