>> Universities should not be responsible for both education and assessment.

> Easier said than done. In more niche disciplines, the only people qualified to evaluate student attainment are other academics in the same discipline.

It is actually done in quite a few places. And even when there is no non-academic alternative, at the very least the examiners could entirely come from a different university than the lecturers.

In Germany there is the concept of "Staatsexamen" where a government-run examination agency recruits examiners from representatives of the profession and academia.

One of the many metrics that UK universities are assessed on is graduate employability - I think it's something like average salary 3 years after graduation in the latest Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Yes, we have a TEF to evaluate us, as well as external examiners and student surveys and other things.

Yes, I know. None of these things seems to have done much to combat grade inflation.