Sustainable Quality Assurance in Higher Education: From Standards to Systematic Change

Abstract

Quality assurance (QA) in higher education has shifted from compliance-driven standards to an intellectualised framework integrating critical thinking, continuous improvement, and alignment with global sustainability agendas. Beyond regulatory compliance, QA now embraces holistic excellence, ensuring academic rigour, societal relevance, and adaptability to global challenges like technological disruption and inequity. Intellectualising QA transcends benchmarking; it cultivates institutional cultures of innovation, inclusivity, and responsibility, key to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through education, research, and societal engagement. This chapter proposes a transformative QA framework that aligns higher education’s core functions with global sustainability targets, offering actionable pathways for institutional change.