Quality assurance of Finnish higher education is based on governmental regulation and self-regulation of higher education institutions (HEI).Both universities and polytechnics are legally obliged to evaluate their activities, take part in external evaluations and publish the results of these evaluations.Governmental regulation has traditionally set the goals and structures of academic degrees, defined the division of educational responsibilities between HEIs,specified the eligibility of students as well as the major tasks and competencies of teachers, but the new University Acts has recently deregulated personnel policies.The Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council (FINHEEC) is the national, independent expert body assisting universities, polytechnics, and the Ministry of Education in evaluation.Each HEI is free to create a quality assurance system of its own.FINHEEC organizes the assessment of institutional quality assurance systems.The results do not affect on governmental funding, nor sanction the 1icense.Many universities have designed and implemented external evaluations of teaching and research.They are normally integrated with self-evaluation, and, variably, utilized in the strategic management and in internal resource allocation.The Academy of Finland is the major governmental funding organization of basic research.It organizes the international peer reviews of funding applications and international evaluations of research fields on national level.Both the Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education are active in providing evaluative information and organizing close interaction with HEIs in developing national policies.Governmental regulation and interaction replaces partly the accreditation procedures run by non-governmental organizations in the USA.Governmental funding has been conditional to quantitative targets and output since 1990s, but the qualitative criteria have been emphasized in the new funding formula.The Finnish models of quality assurance of teaching and research rely both on the European tradition of relatively strong governmental regulation and information provision, but they also make use of the models of professional self-regulation and internal self-assessment originally developed in the USA and translated to European context by the UK and the Netherlands, in particular.