In 1997 the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education was established to provide "an integrated quality assurance service for UK higher education."
About the QAA: "Our mission is to safeguard the public interest in sound standards of higher education qualifications and to inform and encourage continuous improvement in the management of the quality of higher education. We do this by working with higher education institutions to define academic standards and quality, and we carry out and publish reviews against these standards.
We were established in 1997 and are an independent body funded by subscriptions from UK universities and colleges of higher education, and through contracts with the main UK higher education funding bodies. An overview of our work can be found at: QAA: an introduction (external site)"