The context of higher education across the world currently presents evidence of university failures. These failures are evident in areas such as governance, financial and risk management, conduct of senior leaders and quality assurance issues surrounding international education. Having this in mind, the present paper argues the need to add a new definition (to what is already known) of quality. The conceptual approach proposed by the authors takes into account ethics and morals as key virtues of the higher education sector. The literature shows that it is still difficult to find agreement on a single definition of the concept. University leaders and quality assurance professionals define quality in many different ways. However, despite the ethical challenges in the current higher education landscape, little has been discussed on the connection between quality, ethics and moral values. Therefore, the authors provide the unexplored relationship between these concepts.