Mutuality Meets the Market: Analysing Changes in the Control of Quality Assurance in United Kingdom Higher Education 1992–2012

There has been a tendency in the literature to see changes in quality assurance as part of a process of increased state control. This article suggests a more nuanced approach that also takes account of the different trajectories of the pre‐ and post‐1992 sectors. It finds that whilst there have been increases in both state oversight and market coordination since 1992, mutuality (self‐regulation) remains the dominant mode of control of quality assurance in the U nited K ingdom. However the present government's higher education reforms, coming on top of a series of market‐based policies for structure, funding and governance going back at least to 1980, as well as a growing emphasis on students' rights as consumers through the courts, may change the picture.