This work seeks to respond how and why the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU) arose in Argentina. Therefore, the authors wondered whether this organization has been the result of a planning process of an education policy designed within the framework of a development model of the higher education system of the country, or it has emerged as a political response to concrete demands of the requirements of the market and the international credit organisms, as well as the need to be in tune with the policy tendencies of the global context. Furthermore, the authors go through the theoretical models to evaluate higher education quality presented by the specialized bibliography and they classify them according to the international experience and according to the methodology applied so as to determine if the CONEAU effectively responds to one these models.  In order to clarify these questions, on which this work is based, this article especially focuses on the problem of higher education quality both at the global and the local context, as illustrated by the Argentinean case regarding the emergence of the CONEAU. Finally, the authors reflect on the goals achieved and raise new challenges currently demanded by the knowledge society to the country.

Policy, CONEAU, higher education, evaluation, quality.