This article explores the development of policy in quality assurance in higher education. While it briefly examines the broader context of quality assurance in South Africa in terms of the National Qualifications Framework as one of the political levers for establishing a quality assurance system in education and training systemically it focuses more specifically on policy development in the higher education sector, in particular, that constitutes the backdrop for most of the current quality management initiatives. It argues that the current policy- dominated quality assurance environment is a positive and enabling framework, without which extensive educational transformation would not be taking place. While acknowledging some of the limitations of the current implementation of the quality assurance system, it attempts to rebut some of the current arguments that are foregrounding a discourse of resistance to quality assurance initiatives in ways that constructed these initiatives as managerial, and as interfering with the autonomy of institutions of higher education. While acknowledging that policy and the transformation that it brings with it remain contested, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, this article will conclude by arguing that policy development in the quality assurance arena has been a catalyst for significant and benevolent educational reform in higher education in South Africa.