Universities in Germany are required by law to present a concept for ‘safeguarding’the quality of their teaching, scientific research and administration.The aim of this imposed ‘quality assurance’—which universities worldwide, inone way or another, undergo—is to hold higher education institutions accountablefor their performance management in relation to their postulated impact ona state’s economy and on other sectors, such as democratic citizenship. However,what scholarly and academic quality is in concrete terms and how it can be ensured,what qualifications are required of the evaluators, and which socialgroups within the university (administrators, academic stuff, students) are to beheld accountable for what, is precariously undefined. In this article, with thefocus on the quality of academic education, the suggestion will be made that amore precise definition of such quality depends on the respective professionalforms of action to be evaluated. A research on practices within the EducationalSciences is suitable for finding out the different forms of action in the field ofhigher education.