The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance of the document entitled “Reference Standards in the Sociology Field” in relation to the quality assurance of college education, under the context of which the document was needed. In Japan, the quality of college education used to be assured by administrative systems such as “University Establishment Standards,” which are usually adopted before universities are established. However, due to amendments of these standards, the quality is now assured by self-inspection and self-evaluations conducted by each university after they have been established. The self-inspection/self-evaluation activities conducted so far have been limited to institutional certification and evaluation and corporate evaluation. The problem is that they do not offer evaluations for each educational program, and that its quality is not sufficiently inspected. In the future, it will be required for each university to conduct self-inspection and self-evaluation for each department, each faculty member, and each educational program. It is also expected that the self-inspection/self-evaluation of each educational program conducted by the faculty members themselves plays a central role in the quality assurance of college education. Similar to the reference standards in other fields, the main purpose of the Reference Standards in Sociology is to assure the quality of educational program in universities, and self-evaluation is expected to be conducted by each university.