The US accreditation system and the CRE’s quality audits ‐ a comparative study
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684889810242173 |
| Pages | 184-196 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Author | Alberto M.S.C. Amaral |
Introduction
In 1996 the Middle States Association of
Colleges and Schools, the American Council
on Education and the CRE (Association of
European Universities) decided to exchange
experts as members of the evaluation teams in
order to share ideas and experiences. As a
result of this project I had the opportunity of
participating in the accreditation of Columbia
University in New York. In this paper I pre-
sent some of my personal views and findings,
supported by an analysis of recent literature.
The US accreditation system has been
under considerable pressure, mainly since
the approval by Congress of the 1992
amendments to the Higher Education Act
and some proposals to create a national
accreditation board with powers to enforce
uniform, nation-level institutional eligibility
requirements. At the same time, in Europe,
there is a lot of discussion about the possibil-
ity of the European Commission in Brussels
establishing a European (supranational)
system of quality assessment of the higher
education institutions.
For these reasons this type of exchange
seems very timely and I hope that enough
evidence can be collected to establish some
sound comparative studies of the European
and the American systems and see if we can
find better systems of quality assessment and
accreditation.
Recent developments of the US
voluntary accreditation system
In the USA there is a voluntary system of
accreditation. There are six regional accredit-
ing associations. The Middle States, North-
west, New England, North Central, Southern
and Western associations which are responsi-
ble for the accreditation of entire colleges and
universities (institutional accreditation).
There are also many other agencies responsi-
ble for the accreditation of specialised educa-
tional programmes (law, medicine, etc.).
The term “voluntary” can be misleading
because students enrolled in unaccredited
institutions are not eligible for federal stu-
dent-aid funds and because the reputation of
an institution will be improved by obtaining
accreditation from the appropriate bodies.
It is true that, for some time, college and
university presidents have been complaining
about the proliferation of specialised
184
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 6 · Number 4 · 1998 · pp. 184–196
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4883
The US accreditation
system and the CRE’s
quality audits – a
comparative study
Alberto M.S.C. Amaral
The author
Alberto M.S.C. Amaralis Director at CIPES (Centro de
Investigação de Políticas do Ensino Superior), Fundação
das Universidades Portuguesas, Portugal.
Abstract
Presents a comparative study of the US accreditation
system and of the CRE’s (European Association of Univer-
sities) quality audits. After an examination of the pub-
lished literature on recent developments of the systems
their strong and weak points are discussed. This is fol-
lowed by a very detailed analysis of the procedures for
both systems and, based on the personal experience of the
author, it is recommended that the responsibility of
creating the necessary mechanisms for quality assessment
and quality improvement should lie with each and every
institution, while outside independent agencies, such as
the already existing six US regional accrediting associa-
tions, should assume the role of meta-evaluating or
auditing.
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