Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Education

In today's fast changing and volatile world, quality education has become a universal goal where university education should aim at the formation of personalities and intellectual abilities of the graduates and their continuing education and must not be regarded solely as a means of providing them with diplomas and entry tickets to the job market. Striving for quality education has become critical for any nation that would not be content to be an underdeveloped dependent nation; for it is a demonstrated fact that economic growth is determined not so much by the growth of physical capital and labour as by the stock of knowledge and its rate of growth. To aspire to higher standards of educational quality is no longer a luxury, even for so-called third-world universities. Third-world universities may ignore quality education or neglect self evaluation procedures at the risk of stagnation or worse. Quality assurance is in most cases encouraged by continuous self-assessment and by seeking some form of internal or sometimes external validation or accreditation. Accreditation, in education, is the process by which an association or agency evaluates an educational institution or programme of study and formally recognizes it as having met and satisfied, or exceeded, certain predetermined requirements and criteria or standards of educational quality. Apart from ensuring quality in an educational institution, accreditation can also provide public confidence or trust and accountability. Through accreditation the reciprocity of recognition of qualifications and facilitation of the mobility of academic personnel are ensured. Accreditation also contributes to the unity of the professions by bringing together practitioners, teachers and students in an activity directed at improving professional preparation and professional practice. An inherent danger, however, is often encountered in institutions seeking external assessment and accreditation. This danger lies in placing a premium on the production of documents, the writing of quality assurance plans and policy documents rather than the demonstrable implementation of effective means of assuring academic quality.