Approaches to Audit and Accreditation
in developing HE Systems: a comparison
Professor Martin Henson, University of Essex, UK 1st World Summit on Accreditation, New Delhi, India
26 March 2012
Thank you very much for the invitation to speak today – it’s a great honour to speak at such an important event.
My subject today is compare some Approaches to Audit and Accreditation in developing HE systems. There are potentially several aspects. Looking at these issues in newly emerging HE systems; looking at them in established HE systems that are
strongly developing and transforming; looking at how to approach audit and accreditation where these have not existed before; and how to develop existing approaches when they are no longer fit for purpose.
My focus will be to look at and contrast approaches in two
neighbouring countries in the Gulf: the UAE and Oman. They have both been grappling with these issues for the last decade or so – but the approaches and results are very different. I hope these reflections will shed some general light on the issues and challenges that face us all – whether in long-established, or in newly-developing HE systems.
Before I tackle the main topic, though, I want to make a few
remarks about what’s happening in Mexico – as that country is now facing the same issues and challenges that the UAE and Oman did a decade or so ago.
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Mexico is seeing a massive increase in demand for higher
education. Student number have more than doubled in the last six years – and the demand has been soaked up largely be a rapidly expanding private sector that has grown by 50% in the same time.
The demographics of the new applicants suggest that they are coming from lower income backgrounds and are certainly unsophisticated first generation students.
This is the situation that the MOHE in Mexico has urgently to deal with. This is the situation that the UAE, for example, faced a
decade ago.
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Let me give you a quick overview of the profile of licensed HE in the UAE. All but 3 institutions in the UAE are private. This graph shows that distribution by emirate – with Abu Dhabi and Dubai, unsurprisingly perhaps, dominating. There are a few large and good quality institution in Sharjah too. It should also be noted that the UAE’s regulatory framework still allow for some non-federally licensed institutions – so actually the number of institution is much greater than shown here. I will come back to this.
The student enrollments, and indeed the distribution of academic programs offered, show that business degrees dominates the market, with engineering, health, and Computer Science/IT following – and precious little else.
The majority of academic programs are first cycle – bachelors programs – but with a growing number of postgraduate programs, including a few doctoral programs, and a few at the associate level.
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So the distribution is between a very few public institutions, and a vastly larger private sector – of which the majority are for-profit institutions.
The MOHE regulates at the national, that is federal, level through its Commission for Academic Accreditation. The situation is
complicated because the federal entities – the individual emirates – have considerable autonomy and devolved power. There are, in addition, emirate-level regulators – such as ADEC in Abu Dhabi, and KHDA in Dubai, that have simultaneous jurisdiction. This, of course, creates tensions, which I will come back to.
The institutions that operate form an extremely heterogeneous set – operating curricula models and quality assurance practices that reflect there origins. These may be Australian, European, or US, for example.
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The original Standards were based on a model from the US – from the SACS standards. As they have been revised, they have become much more situated in the UAE cultural and education context – with considerable benefits.
The Standards by 2007 had fully embraced outcomes-based
curricula and outcomes-based teaching/learning and assessment. They have been further strengthend in 2011.
Until 2007 the CAA was almost entirely a regulatory authority. Since 2007 however, it has embraced an additional function as an enhancer of quality in the UAE sector – with training activities in many areas.
The Standards are highly prescriptive and highly proscriptive – initially reacting, as Mexico may now, to an urgent threat to the integrity of its HE system. The Standards have not changed in this regard at least, over the last decade.
The CAA is held in high regard internationally, being one of only 5 out of 65 members of INQAAHE to meet its guidelines for good practice for quality agencies.
Semi-autonomous individual emirates have created so-called Education Free Zones – which are deregulated and institutions within them do not have to operate with a license from the CAA. There are consequences for students (inability to get government jobs, no articulation to licensed PG programs). The KHDA in Dubai, the local regulator, looks after the free-zone institutions. It should be noted that avoiding national regulation is not necessarily an indication of a poor provider. Some institutions cannot bend their own national framework to the rigidity of the national Standards – which still impose homogeneity in a heterogeneous market.
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This diagram captures the UAE system. Institutions must first be initially licensed to operate. They may then propose academic programs, though may not advertise them or recruit students until they have been initially accredited. Licensure is renewed on a regular basis, and full accreditation is awarded once a program has graduated students and demonstrated internationally comparable quality.
The review are wholly summative assessment, and any
recommendations made to the institutions must be met before licensure or accreditation is granted.
Turning now to Oman. We see here a different profile. Here there is a closer balance between public and private providers.
Private providers have always had to offer academic programs in conjunction with (which means as franchises from) credible international partners.
There is strong growth in student numbers in Oman – while in the UAE the market is at least saturated and there may well be
significant over provision already.
The OAC was established in 2001 and developed its Framework in 2005. This is based on an Australian model whereas the UAE model is from the US. The advantages of this are that models are tried and tested. The disadvantages are that such testing has been done in a homogeneous national context rather than in the context of a heterogeneous education hub. The rigidity this imposes has
consequences – indeed it is the reason, as I mentioned earlier, why some perfectly good institutions feel the need to avoid national regulation in the UAE.
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Institutional Quality Assurance started in Oman in 2004 and pilot reviews were undertaken. These were not wholly satisfactory. The assumptions regarding the maturity of the institutions were wrong – and the pilots were far too ambitious. There was a feeling that there had been insufficient communication and consultation with the providers. There was a feeling that there was insufficient attention given to the special circumstances pertaining in Oman.
As a result a new framework was developed – based on formative Quality Audit followed by summative Standards assessment.
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The OAAA was formed in 2010 as an entity more independent of the Ministry it answers to. To date around 30 quality audits have been completed. This should be contrasted with the more than 100 institutional audits and at least 700 program accreditations that the CAA has undertaken in this time frame.
Quality Audit is a formative assessment and the recommendations of reviews, in contrast to the UAE, are advisory not mandatory.
Another contrast between Oman and UAE is the role of
enhancement and training. This has been built in to the Oman system from the beginning. There is a national quality training program and a quality network. I have no time to discuss both of these in detail – but a few words about the former is in order.
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Oman has created a semi-independent National Quality Training Program that is co-owned by the Oman Academic Accreditation Authority and the Ministry of Higher Education.
It systematically aligns with the needs and demands of the quality audit process, and has adapted to the expressed needs of the Oman HE community and the perceived weaknesses that emerge from the quality audits themselves.
Thus, main areas in which training has been provided center on key aspects of the quality audit process. In particular, on strategic planning, on the ADRI cycle – which is the OAAA’s approach to quality enhancement, on risk management, and on data gathering and analysis in the quality cycle.
There has been a huge demand for this training from within the HE sector in Oman, and an attempt to adopt a “train the trainer”
approach to reach a much broader audience.
However, a review of this approach reveal issues – these partly concern workload issues within HE institutions, but more likely concern a lack of confidence and depth of knowledge of the
institutional trainers in passing on the training to their colleagues.
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Very briefly then, this is the framework in operation in Oman. As I mentioned, even this, diagram remains partly aspirational – as only the formative quality audit component of the cycle has as yet been implemented.
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These two neighboring countries have taken different paths in setting up their quality frameworks. I have already mentioned a few contrasts along the way – but let me sum up what I think are some of the most salient points.
At present, the systems differ in that the UAE’s is uniformly
This may reflect the situation at the turn of the previous decade – where the UAE system resembled the situation present in Mexico today – in particular a large and growing, unregulated private sector in the context of a small or shrinking public sector. In contrast Oman had not only a more balanced portfolio, but a private sector that was already quasi-regulated through the
mandatory partnerships with credible international partners – who supplied the academic programs.
In both cases, importing quality structures from other systems, whether from Australia or the US, threw up significant issues. In part these were cultural, but more significantly they concerned differences between the heterogeneous systems into which these frameworks were being deployed, in contrast to the relatively homogeneous systems from which they came.
The rigidity, in the UAE for example, has led to high-quality
institutions avoiding regulation through the free zones, so they are able to retain their system’s integrity and distinctiveness.
Most crucial, I believe, is the preparedness of the academic
institutions to either the UAE or Oman system. The UAE’s adoption of the outcomes-based approach was not initially accompanied by systematic training. The upshot of course is that institutions were set up to fail. In Oman, and despite opportunities for initial
training, the notions of self-study and especially the adoption of a rigorous approach such as ADRI were new and difficult. And even today, several years on, institutions are still often unable to develop self-studies at a level that makes quality audit an appropriate
mechanism.
Notions of internal quality assurance, quality enhancement and the data collection and analysis that accompanies these, were foreign to institutions in both countries – and change has been driven through regulatory failure much more than through development and training.
To some extent at least, in the UAE, the highly proscriptive and prescriptive approach has led to a compliance culture in which the Standards are met more in the letter than in the spirit.
There remain serious issues over the achievement of academic standards at a level commensurate to what is expected
internationally. This has emerged as UAE institutions have moved from initial accreditation of academic programs to full
accreditation in the last few years. In Oman, of course, it remains an open question – as program accreditation has not been
Finally, the issue of training and development is critical. A training element came to the UAE system later in the development of the audit and accreditation processes, while in Oman in was integrated from the outset and has continued to strengthen.
But even in Oman’s much more cautious approach, with training provided alongside formative assessment, the ability of institutions to make use of the training, the extent and depth of the training, have limited – at least to some extent – effect. Institutions in both countries often remain immature in strategic planning, in
developing satisfactory internal quality assurance and
enhancement processes, developing satisfactory data collection and analysis methodologies, and critically, lack confidence and skills in undertaking a self study.
If there is just one conclusion I wish to leave you with it is this: when dealing with immature institutions or sectors, one cannot underestimate the importance of building partnerships with
accreditation and audit authorities through systematic training. So difficult is this particular challenge, that we may need to think about new modes of engagement – combining more systematically quality audit with institutional training and development –
