The National Assessment of Courses in Brazil

Policy Analysis




Subject benchmarking in the United Kingdom

Gareth Williams
Institute of Education, University of London



Executive summary

Subject benchmarking was part of an agglomeration of quality assurance measures that emerged
in United Kingdom higher education during the 1990s in large part as a reaction to the precipitous
transition from ‘elite’ to ‘mass’ higher education in the early years of the decade. Rapid growth of
student numbers was accompanied by expansion in the number of subjects and areas of study offered
as degree programmes. This aroused political attention, and national government, as the main
provider of funds, required the higher education sector to take steps to ensure that all its degree
programmes were fit for the purpose. Over 50 subject-benchmarking committees issued reports
between 1998 and 2001 setting out in some detail what degree programmes in the specialist subjects
might be expected to cover. However, despite the initial intentions the benchmark reports were never
used for hard regulatory purposes and instead have become developmental tools, particularly in new
subject areas trying to attain academic respectability. The whole exercise has demonstrated the
enduring collegiality of the academic community in British higher education and the enduring belief
that in some real sense degrees from all higher education institutions have something meaningful in
common.



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