The development of procedures designed to provide quantitative assessments of quality in higher education institutions are reviewed. These procedures employ a systems framework and utilize quantitative data to compare institutions or programs of similar types with one another. Three major elements essential in the development of models focusing on the assessment are as follows: they must be multidimensional, they must consider quality in relationship to the purposes and mission of the institution, and comparisons should be made of institutions within comparable groups; and judgments about quality intended for use in policy considerations should rest on quantifiable data tied as closely as possible to firm outcome measures. The approach was developed to assess quality within three generally accepted primary missions of higher education: student development, research, and service. A matrix may be used to display relevant data (i.e., categories for major institutional purposes on the horizontal axis and basic institutional variables or descriptors on the vertical axis). These descriptors serve as outcome indicators for the three institutional purposes areas. The systems elements of outcomes, inputs, and transformation process are included, and the elements for each category are specified. The data enable longitudinal self-comparison, snapshot comparison with normative cutoffs or ranges, and comparisons with groups of other similar institutions. The procedures are elaborated and an example of the deviation from the mean approach is presented, based on faculty and tuition data from all New York state institutions between 1977-1979. (SW)