It also surveys of the current state of the measurement of the quality of post-secondary education and identifies strategies for improvement. [...] The conceptual framework is simple, capturing the PSE experience as a story of inputs and outputs whose narrative flows like this: • Beginning Characteristics – the characteristics and abilities of incoming students that affect the quality of their educational experience and the outcomes. [...] Each of these carves out a limited part of the overall quality assessment framework and generally undertakes the ‘estimation’ in a less-than-ideal manner in terms of the data iii employed (many of them ignore students’ beginning characteristics, for example), how those data are manipulated, the spin put on the findings, and in other respects. [...] The purposes of this paper are therefore as follows: • to provide a critical examination of current practices in higher education quality measurement in Canada and around the world; • to propose a comprehensive framework for discussions pertaining to the measurement of quality which can help establish a set of principles for measuring it; • to examine the data requirements of various approaches to [...] This is not always a hindrance to effectiveness, and where governments participate in the process the lack of transparency is offset by the fact that at least one major external stakeholder understands the process and has some “ownership” of the results.