“Quality” refers nominatively to a standard of performance. Quality is the central idea that differentiates speech protected by academic freedom (the right to worthwhile utterances) from constitutionally protected speech (the right to say anything at all). Extant documents and discussions state that professional peers determine quality based on norms of a field. But professional peers deem utterances and activities as consonant with quality only in reference to criteria that establish meaning of the term. In the absence of articulation, these criteria are ambiguous. Consequently, there exists recurrent confusion about what faculty members have a defensible right to say and do. This article develops an ontology of quality in reference to higher education teaching, a component of academic careers generally not subject to extensive peer review and where instructors thereby exercise considerable autonomy. The ontology identifies three criteria that bound quality: constraint, context, and amplitude. Boundedness exists only insofar as boundaries are controlled. The article examines two types of problems in professional control that affect quality: slippage and overreach. Both are instances of organizational deviance and abrogation of professional ethics. It is argued that the patterns threaten the structural integrity and public confidence of faculty, fields, and higher education institutions.

“质量”主要指的是绩效标准。质量是区分受学术自由保护的言论（有价值言论的权利）与受宪法保护的言论（发表任何言论的权利）的核心思想。现有的文件和讨论表明，专业同行根据领域规范来确定质量。但专业同行仅在参考建立术语含义的标准时才认为话语和活动与质量一致。在缺乏明确阐述的情况下，这些标准是模糊的。因此，对于教职人员拥有正当的言论和行为权利，经常存在混乱。本文提出了关于高等教育教学的质量本体论，高等教育教学是学术职业的一个组成部分，通常不受广泛的同行评审，因此教师可以行使相当大的自主权。该本体确定了限制质量的三个标准：约束、上下文和幅度。只有当边界受到控制时，才存在有界性。文章探讨了影响质量的专业控制中的两类问题：滑移和越权。两者都是组织偏差和违背职业道德的例子。有人认为，这些模式威胁到教师、领域和高等教育机构的结构完整性和公众信心。