Thailand's higher education sector was officially founded with the establishment of Chulalongkorn University in 1917 and it has continued to grow ever since. However, the unprecedented increase in competition in higher education worldwide, which is primarily driven by globalisation and university league tables, makes it essential for Thailand's higher education institutions (HEIs) to improve their quality and competitiveness. Although a quality assurance (QA) system has been placed since 1999, the quality of Thai higher education (HE) remains problematic, particularly the quality of teaching. As can be seen in international league tables, Thai HEIs are always placed in low ranking positions. Therefore, the aim of this qualitative research study is to investigate how the quality of teaching and the QA system in Thai HE can be improved by interviewing twenty-seven academic staff in three different kinds of Thai HEIs, namely, an old university, a new university and a private university. There are four main research questions, namely, how do academics perceive the quality of teaching in Thai HE? How can the quality of teaching in Thai HE be improved from their perspective? How do academics perceive the current quality assurance system in Thai HE? How can the quality of the Thai HE sector be improved from their perspective? The findings indicate that the academic staff deem that the quality of teaching in general Thai HE needs to be improved; however, they believe that the teaching in their own HEI is of relatively good quality. In terms of how to improve the quality of teaching in Thai HE, the academics gave various answers, which can be divided into two aspects: policy aspect and apparatus aspect. The policy aspect consists of (1) the policy for facilitating the teaching of current academics and (2) the policy for recruiting better qualified and experienced academics in the future. The apparatus aspect includes: (1) the teaching enhancement apparatuses for supporting and facilitating the academics; (2) the teaching assessment apparatus for assessing the teaching quality; and (3) the teaching reward apparatus for encouraging and persuading the academics to improve their teaching quality. FUl1hermore, these academic staff expressed neither a positive nor negative perspective of the QA system in Thai HE. However, they recommended that the QA system could be improved by fostering every HEI staff member's awareness of quality, developing and implementing a transparent and non-bureaucratic performance indicator system, and reducing the dependence on documentation or paperwork. Lastly, they suggest how to improve the quality of Thai HE by (1) improving the teaching and learning process, (2) improving the academic development system, (3) improving foreign language skills, (4) avoiding political interference, and (5) improving research both quantitatively and qualitatively.