This article sets out to investigate the notions Spanish university teaching staff have of quality in education, on the assumption that those notions give a reliable picture of the attitudes of teaching staff towards education policy design and university management. The paper takes an empirical approach, collecting opinions telematically via a questionnaire. The responses show that teaching staff prefer modern notions of quality in teaching, and those closer to the culture of their educational institutions, but are not confident that their managers share those preferences. The opinions of teaching staff can provide useful information for the design of education policies and quality management systems applicable to Spanish universities.

Recent decades have witnessed how both in Spain and elsewhere, legal reforms have helped to transform the management and governance of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). These transformations have changed the conditions in which academics work, with a knock-on effect on their job satisfaction. Although these legal developments in Spain have basically been the same for both the public and private sectors in Higher Education, the evidence gathered in this article shows that the rate of cases of loss of job satisfaction is higher in public institutions than in private ones. The article provides an initial explanation for this situation, whereby the legal reforms have been met with different organisational solutions in these two kinds of institutions.