This paper argues that the current approach to educational quality formation in transnational higher education promotes educational imperialism, and that guidelines and practices should be altered to embrace context-sensitive measures of quality. The claims are sustained by findings from a study that investigated how academics understood and pursued educational quality in an Australian university programme delivered in partnership with a Chinese university in China. A key finding was that a home programme functioned as the single reference point for quality in the programme delivered in China. Quality in the China programme was sought through the imposition of practices and philosophies associated with the home programme, which required the suppression of local educational traditions. The paper points out that reliance on a home programme as the single measure of quality is encouraged by governing UNESCO/OECD guidelines on quality in cross-border provision.