This article provides a critique of current debates about what quality enhancement is for and what it does. It outlines a conceptual framework drawing on different understandings of quality assurance and quality enhancement in higher education, which helps to refine the role of quality enhancement in improving student learning. The paper analyses existing debates on emerging trends in quality assurance and enhancement, particularly within European higher education (HE) systems, with reference to the relationships between research, education, social and economic cohesion, the changing nature of student representation, and learning analytics. A new balance between assurance and enhancement could reconcile ways of thinking generated by higher education, knowledge structures emerging in research communities within the universities, and methods of enhancing learning and teaching which enable a degree of student-led demand.