This article discusses the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF). An observation about the MQF is that in the particular context of developments in Malaysian education and training and its economic and social context, all roads have led to standards and quality assurance. This is the view expressed by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) officials who see the framework primarily as a developmental instrument. It is a "basis for communication, and not an entity in itself." It is a response to an expanding education market, especially in higher education, that lacks historically formed quality traditions and mechanisms. In a primarily supply-led sector, institutions are important as historical forms, and in the Malaysian context they have proven to be particularly important in the context of market liberalisation. The MQF is fundamentally an institutional response--a movement towards a somewhat guided and developmental approach following a period of liberalisation. However, as an institution, the MQF is designed to establish and build a new set of processes and in doing this it seeks to create different forms and currencies between different sets of stakeholders. Herein lays the constraints of institutional logic because the new institution must utilise the old institutions and therefore be subject to their constraints. In the case of the MQF, this is observable in the higher education location of the agency--the MQA, the differentiated relationship between the formal MQF and its elements (levels and descriptors), and the limited realization of some of its rhetoric, such as that surrounding RPL and credit. Further observations of institutional constraints could be made across the other sectors. So, a possible transferable lesson of the MQF experience is that the intrinsic logic of national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) will always embody institutional constraints because of their inherent dependence upon established institutions. Put another way, intrinsic logic will always need to make concessions to institutional logic because of its dependent relationship. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)