SUMMARY
The Teaching Quality Assessment exercise (TQA) is described as having the potential to provide a useful way of formatively evaluating a subject provider's international effort. Examples are given of ways in which this potential is being or may be realized. However, it is also argued that the TQA will only be partially effective in this respect unless institutions either individually or collectively develop a model of what successful internationalization should look like. This paper provides an outline strategy for successful internationalization in higher education. However, it concludes by arguing that the TQA itself is probably too cumbersome and top‐heavy to encourage honest self‐evaluation and that the responsibility for the evaluation of educational provision (including that of international education) should be returned directly to the institutions themselves.