The quality of higher education in Indonesia has not been evenly distributed including vocational nursing schools. The academic quality assurance for nursing vocational schools is not at its best, which has an impact on the quality of nurse’s graduates who will provide the health services. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of leadership on academic quality assurance. This study explores the problem of leadership based on indicators: supporting, inspiring, directing, facilitating. Academic quality assurance based on indicators: quality policy, quality design, supervision, feedback. The quantitative research uses a questionnaire on 122 permanent lecturers at 24 nursing vocational schools in Jakarta. The results of the analysis of the influence of leadership by influencing the academic quality assurance showed the distribution of estimated points formed an acceptable linear line. Thus it is proven that the leadership had a positive direct impact on the academic quality assurance. Furthermore the study also found indicators that had the most significant contribution in leadership and academic quality assurance were facilitating and academic quality policies. This explained that facilitative leadership had a positive direct impact on academic quality policy. In addition, there are some institutional practice recommendations suggested in accordance with the findings of this paper.