Context of the Higher Education Standards Framework

 Download the Higher Education Standards Framework Links to an external site. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015).

As shown in the figure, the Higher Education Standards (HES) Framework has been structured to align with the student experience or ‘student life cycle’, i.e. as they progress from prospective students through to the award of a qualification. The HES Framework is also grounded in the core characteristics of the provision of higher education. In consequence, the standards are intended to be useful to higher education providers as a framework for internally monitoring the quality of higher education activities (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, 2012).

The Standards for Higher Education are organised into seven major ‘Domains’:

1. student participation and attainment;
2. learning environment;
3. teaching;
4. research and research training;
5. institutional quality assurance;
6. governance and accountability; and
7. representation, information and information management.