ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a number of elements of a general model of quality assessment in higher education. These elements are put in a historical context of quality assessment in medieval universities and deduced from developments in quality assessment in North America and Western Europe. Contrary to the United States and Canada, the predominant form of coordination in the Western European higher education systems in many countries is State control, and with the exception of Britain, this has been so for a long period of time. Several governments have advocated deregulation by central ministries and increased autonomy of, and competitiveness among, the institutions. An important development in higher education policy-making in Western Europe is the rise of the governmental strategy of 'self-regulation'. The intrinsic qualities refer to the ideals of the search for truth and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. The extrinsic qualities are related to the services higher education institutions provide to society.
