Although the world is changing, quality management remains an area of relative calm. Many institutions continue to use elaborated versions of a model that is developed by the Council of Academic Awards and conceived at a time when higher education was not so exposed to market forces, when the policy and regulatory environment was relatively stable, and in a period in which UK higher education could still be described as an "elite" system. Approaches to academic quality assurance that were fit for the purpose of managing an institution's responsibilities in one set of circumstances may be inappropriate in another; whatever their provenance, the established quality management systems may fail to secure quality and standards in the turbulent higher education environment of the new millennium. Working from this premise, the Good Management Practice project on "Quality Risk Management" funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England set out to explore the potential for applying risk management principles to the design of cost-effective quality management systems. The project team comprised representatives of the four participating institutions: Bath Spa University, the University of Durham, Edge Hill College of Higher Education, and Leeds Metropolitan University. In this article, the authors' discussion is based on the team's findings and a case study on the experience of one institution in applying a "risk-based" approach to elements of its quality management strategy is presented. (Contains 1 footnote.)