| Accreditation and its Challenges |
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About | Benefits | Approaches | Challenges | Accrediting Bodies | Program Prep | Global Trends | Misuse |
Accreditation is continually challenged by other means of assessing quality of academic units and their graduates, and it is likely that these challenges will re-shape the way accreditation is administered and organized. Among the contribution factors to pressure on the accreditation systems are the increasing mobility of engineering labor (and of employment in general) on a global scale, and structural changes in some influential educational systems, such as the adoption of the Bologna Process by many countries in Europe.
As traditionally practiced, accreditation is a certification process that higher education institutions undergo periodically. It is essentially a credentialing procedure by which an external group (sent by an accrediting body) objectively examines and evaluates an educational program or institution to ensure that it meets a set of standards. These standards have been established by experts in the field. At present the result of the accreditation is usually binary: pass or fail.
Challenges to the traditional approach:
Do we need accrediting bodies?
Many institutions are content to establish ad hoc groups of respected colleagues from other institutions to serve periodically on evaluation teams for specific programs. Using this approach, the credentials of the accrediting team are never in question. Moreover, the team can be shaped to meet the aims of the visited program by recruiting visitors from programs whose characteristics fit the aims of the visited program.
Should the result of accreditation be only binary?
Should we strive merely to meet minimum standards rather than achieving continuous improvement and excellence? Some groups in Europe have called for using the following four categories for every criterion in the accreditation process:
- Fails to meet minimum requirements
- Meets minimum requirements
- Exceeds minimum requirements
- Surpasses the criteria
Should we strive for diversity in accreditation methods and for competition between multiple accrediting bodies?
In most countries there is a single accrediting body for each type of academic program and institutions that seek accreditation of such programs face a monopoly. For example, a program in Electrical Engineering in the United States would seek accreditation by the accrediting body ABET Inc. or go unaccredited (there is no other recognized accrediting agency in the United States for programs in Electrical Engineering). Is this state of affairs desirable, or should we strive to create more competition between multiple accrediting bodies (and possibly different methodologies and accreditation philosophies)?
Are there viable alternatives to accreditation?
Accreditation is not the only mechanism used by constituents of educational programs to evaluate quality and make enrollment, hiring, and licensing decisions. Reputation and rankings of programs, evaluation of individual skills through grades and continuous education credentials, and on-the-job training and testing have been used to supplement and sometimes substitute for accreditation. While at present accreditation continues to play a major role in the tradition of higher education worldwide, its centrality is threatened by increased transparency of institutions and programs and by industry’s increased emphasis on proven capabilities as opposed to formal titles and traditional credentials. The increased mobility of engineering and computing jobs has presented two complementary challenges to the accreditation system:
- On one hand, it has weakened the use of accreditation as a threshold for entering the profession, since many engineering and computing tasks were exported to regions where accreditation is non-existent or is very weak.
- On the other hand, it has increased the demand for new accrediting bodies and new mutual recognition agreements by industrial companies that seek to develop entry thresholds for prospective employees where these did not formerly exist.
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About | Benefits | Approaches | Challenges | Accrediting Bodies | Program Prep | Global Trends | Misuse |
