Achieving Quality in Higher Education: A Critique of The Higher Education Council's Perspective

Significant administrative reforms have affected the Australian university sector since 1989. With the pursuit of improved quality of higher education now a focus of government attention - in an effort to make the higher education system more accountable to the taxpaying public which supports it - this paper provides a critique of the thinking which informs the Higher Education Council's Achieving Quality report, and its earlier "Quality of Higher Education" Discussion Paper. A centralised system based on the bureaucratic pursuit of quality leaves economists with much to criticise