It is illegal in the UK to offer degrees or related qualifications without proper authorisation. Authorisation may be granted under Royal Charter or by Act of Parliament or by a special order of the Department for Education and Skills. In order to award degrees, colleges and universities must demonstrate a commitment to quality assurance and show that they have adequate systems for safeguarding academic standards. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education publishes a code of practice, information on benchmark standards, and qualification frameworks that give details of the quality and standards publicly funded institutions are expected to maintain. This is available on the QAA website www.qaa.ac.uk

The higher education (HE) sector includes over 90 universities and over 150 colleges and institutions offering studies at undergraduate degree level and above. Several different quality checks are imposed on these institutions.

Institutions' internal quality assurance processes

Universities and colleges in the UK are autonomous, self-governing institutions with full legal responsibility for the quality and standards of their programmes and awards. They have their own quality assurance mechanisms, which include external examiners.

The Institutional Quality Audit

This procedure produced audit reports which dealt with each institution's overall systems for assuring and enhancing quality. Institutional Quality Audits were carried out by the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education) from 1991 until 2003. Reports are available on the QAA website www.qaa.ac.uk

Subject review (Teaching Quality Assessment)

This measure ran from 1994 until 2001 and focused on the quality of teaching and learning in specific subjects. Full details of the system, including the results, are available through the QAA website www.qaa.ac.uk Subject review assessments used different grading systems at different times in England,Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so be sure you understand which scale is being used for each institution you look at. There are three kinds of system for which you'll see rating scores.