The Dearing Report and the Maintenance of Academic Standards: Towards a New Academic Corporatism

The Dearing Report has given the responsibility for maintaining standards and quality in British higher education to the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). While this quango may be able to ensure ‘threshold’ standards, it is more doubtful whether it can help institutions to sustain high academic quality. Nonetheless, the Report has three potentially very significant consequences: it represents another move towards the creation of a national curriculum in higher education, it offers a more restrictive interpretation of university autonomy, and – despite its protestations – represents a threat to the growing diversity of British higher education. The thrust of the article is that the Report has charted an uneasy ‘middle way’between market forces and statism in the quest for quality control in higher education. It remains to be seen whether the academic corporatism represented by the QAA can resist the pressures of the state and the market.