This paper is concerned with the quality or standards of degrees seen as an aspect of quality assurance. The awarding of a degree is the key, formal, public and legal act by which a university sets its seal on its graduates’ achievements. The paper calls on two studies: one in the UK and the other in Australia. Both focus on the minutiae of examining practice. This paper focuses on four matters of principle: the purpose and function of external examiners; the disposition of external examiners; examiners’ contribution to the technical soundness of examinations; the role of the external examiner in the Examination Board. The paper concludes by suggesting examination arrangements which are consistent with three distinct, possibly mutually exclusive, purposes of external examining: the means for an institution to check its own standards, the means by which a group of instititions calibrate degree standards; a form of public accountability.

Abstract Can university teaching be counted a profession? The work of academics is examined against four criteria associated with professional life: members share a body of knowledge; professional identity is for life; professionals are accountable for the effects of what they do rather than for the actions they take; professional bodies restrict access and enforce codes of practice. The conclusion is that academics form a Janus‐faced profession in which their professionalism is more evident in respect of the subjects they teach than in respect of their academic duties of teaching and examining. Professional training is recommended as the appropriate treatment for this lop‐sided condition.

AbstractDrawing on 18 years of experience in university staff development the author considers the way staff training is regarded by academics and relates it to the concept of ‘professionalism’ among university teachers. He describes a two‐year in‐service course for teachers in higher education as an illustration of one form a professional training might take and argues the case for soundly basing such training on considerations of principle and theory. Changing attitudes and perceptions is perhaps more important than learning classroom skills, or management technique. Training should be informed by research but the author illustrates ambivalent attitudes rewards research on universities with a deception of recent personal experience in connection with a national research project on examiners. The inseparability of institutional research and staff development is illustrated with an account of a stuff development exercise associated with the introduction of staff appraised schemes. Lessons are dram from each of the illustrations to suggest some of the key characteristics desirable in a staff college for universities.