ABSTRACT
The Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) developmental policies focused, as intended, on the range of subjects which colleges proposed to offer, and on the questions of quality with which the Council and its committees were concerned from the beginning. In this respect the CNAA's central concerns would have remained the same whatever policy governments formulated, so long as there were 'non-university' institutions seeking approval for their courses under the terms of the CNAA's Charter. Although the CNAA was not itself formally involved in the planning, it was involved in the consultations, and at various points it linked in with the continuing policy developments. An emphasis on its own policy for research was to be one of the CNAA's most tangible responses to the development of a public sector of higher education. Critics saw the policy as a legacy of the National Council for Technological Awards and applicable perhaps to technical but not higher education.
