A study by UNESCO in 2007 points out to various academic frauds in higher education across the world and included slippage in the virtuous accreditation process to a vicious one. To build an integrity-driven model for accreditation, entities such as the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, European Consortium for Accreditation and the likes of ABET, IET, AACSB, EQUIS, etc, and private players such as Thomson Learning, have put in place a globally-accepted foolproof accreditation mechanism for government and non-governmental accreditation agencies.
Global demand for international education has pushed the US, Europe, Australia and the UK to ensure that varsities and programmes are accredited by reputed agencies. Despite this, many deficiencies have crept enabling assessment and accreditation services by those not reputed as well. However, an enlightened market mechanism in these countries is able to distinguish between the good, bad and ugly. Such enlightened vigilantism is a key for India that has witnessed repeated instances of fraud across all levels of higher education. This has to be addressed through a regulatory framework with a good mix of accreditation, assessment and audit—the three corner stones of quality assurance mechanism.
The American Higher Education system has the longest history of accreditation and has created a mixed method for accreditation by both government and private agencies. The challenge is to cherry-pick the best from both models for a harmonious coexistence. Since accreditation is an external quality review that provides guarantees to academic standards, the accrediting agencies need to pass various filters to empower them to be a guarantor. Partnership with international ranking agencies or indigenous ranking methodologies or decorating governance with ‘celebrities’ are not sufficient. Many countries have started recognising the need for accreditation by private agencies after adequate quality checks. There seems to be a hasty move in India to outsource the accreditation mechanism to private agencies.
A cross-sectional glance at different experiences across various countries provide the following pointers:
A foolproof government-controlled regulatory mechanism with a multi-stakeholder participation in governance to approve private accreditation agencies. It is also essential to have an expiry date for approval to weed out unpopular but approved private accreditation agencies.
Prospective Professional Accreditation Agencies (PPAAs) must have a leak-proof governance mechanism with members who are not directly or indirectly related to any higher education institution.
A strategic roadmap with broad and important guidelines for the following key attributes—regulation with transparency, conflict of interest among PPAAs and higher education institutions, questionable role of ‘third-innings academics’, code of ethics with high standards and protocols for academic, moral and financial integrity, effective management tools, public information access and symmetry, and lastly, the willingness of PPAA to subject itself to strong and rigorous enquiry in the event of malpractice.
PPAAs must pass an external quality audit of their accreditation services by a government-empanelled international accreditation agency or association.
PPAAs’ accreditation mechanism must be transparently shared in public domain for suggestions before it’s okayed.
A PPAA process must be transparent, fair, non-exploitative and run on a not-for-loss basis. Its rollout must be in a phased manner with recognised professional bodies, such as Institution of Engineers or AIMA or IMA etc, being prepared for an institutional accreditation framework first and private third parties later.
In short, accreditation by recognised third party agencies needs a strong six-pack body.
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Dean, Planning & Development, SASTRA University
vaidhya@sastra.edu