Governments, the political and academic community, media and in particular students and young men and women applying for higher education, as well as their respective families, all promise hope for and demand quality education for themselves and their loved ones.
But, how can society in general have any idea whether an institution is of higher quality, or specifically provides quality education?
Prestige is one way. A good reputation requires a history of good performance achieved over a long period of time; when there are many generations of graduates to attest to the quality of the education they received. Rankings also provide information; although the majority of them focus on aspects such as research and others that don’t necessarily have direct relation to the quality of undergraduate formation. Publicity is by no means enough or even reliable. The answer many countries have increasingly been giving is the implementation of an accreditation system; a tool that has proven to be key to promoting quality, and guaranteeing said quality to society at large by using certain universally well-established guidelines and procedures.
Internal and external users of higher education expect that certification processes provide clear, useful and reliable information; especially information pertaining to integrity and specifically information regarding the promises made by IHE (Institutions of Higher Education). This is reflected in elements such as enrollment and graduation requirements, graduate profiles and study plans, compliance with recommendations for improvement indicated in assessment reports, and recommendations made in rulings and decisions governing certification issued by accrediting entities.
If an accreditation system’s purpose is to assess quality, it must approach the subject in an operationally feasible manner. The notion that it’s used in most systems is translated to “suitability for achieving the intended purpose”, in other words, it’s effectiveness in fulfilling the intended objective. In the end it’s all about how effectively an institution, career or program implements certain attributes characterized by a set of standards and criteria. The established standards and criteria are organized into aspects of suitability and competence of the academic body; availability, quality and use of infrastructure and educational resources; integrity and effectiveness of institutional governance, administration, student support services, teaching and learning and internal regulation mechanisms among others. By applying the aforementioned aspects, specific elements can vary along with their respective focus, whether it is on consumables, processes or results.
But it isn’t always easy for institutions to survey, organize and display the evidence of attributes that signify compliance with each and every aspect implied in the standards and criteria mentioned above. This is something by no means advisable to broach at the last minute before delivering all the pertinent information to the accrediting agency (typically a self-assessment or self-study report). This makes it a phase that exerts much pressure on the academic community, especially on their governing bodies. Often good institutions see poor results in the accreditation process due to inadequate or insufficient organization and corroboration of the chosen proof of quality.
It is therefore of great convenience that these institutions establish an internal system allowing them to systematically and continuously identify proof and corroborating documentation, hopefully in triplicate, of how they satisfy each and every one of the standards and criteria that lead them down the desired path; all this independent of the accreditation process. Here the aforementioned internal system is key and constitutes a great facilitator and time saving element; it also provides all the resources, design and use of technology for incorporating and processing data. The information used in the process includes achievements expressed in numbers, facts and other supporting data and the results of an array of analyses and the application of quality adjustments made over time.
John Ruskin correctly pointed out “quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort”, and successful accreditation demands intelligent efforts toward surveying and providing sufficient adequate proof of quality.