Higher-education officials from 17 countries agreed on a set of principles Wednesday to evaluate the quality of master’s and doctoral degrees. The standards were discussed at a meeting in Australia sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools and the Group of Eight, an association of Australia’s top universities. Participants, which included deans of graduate schools and others, said that quality evaluation must “go beyond the assessment of research quality” and consider others factors, like admissions, student recruitment, and what ultimately students learn from their courses. Institutions from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, the United States, and
Vietnam signed the agreement.