ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how national developments affect institutions of higher education. Its scope is huge, but contestable, because government policies vary in their effectiveness, national agencies vary in the esteem and support they enjoy from the higher education sector, and institutions vary in the extent to which they recognize the applicability of national developments. In England the Department for Education and Skills (DFES) is the lead department for most aspects of higher education policy. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has a role in research policy and higher education-industry relationships, in particular through the Office for Science and Technology and the Foresight exercise. The worldwide explosion of interest in e-learning was first driven from the bottom up, as individual academic enthusiasts experimented with commercial software or developed their own. The QAA was created after protracted dialogue between institutions and governments in the 1990s about the most appropriate form of accountability and regulation of teaching in higher education.
