Over the past decades, intensive efforts have been made internationally to manage the quality of higher education. Based on different works of literature, the widest and most applicable approaches to quality assurance mechanisms are accreditation, audit, peer review, and assessment. Authorised bodies of quality assurance can implement one or more of these approaches, depending on their educational traditions and systems (Lemaitre, 2014; Ryan, 2015; Beerkens, 2018).
68 3.5.1 Accreditation
The accreditation approach is the most frequently applied system of external quality assurance in many higher education systems to assure the quality of education.
Accreditation is the method by which quality assurance agencies or accrediting bodies evaluate the quality of a specific educational programme, or an HLI as a whole, in order to officially award recognition for meeting certain pre-set minimal standards or criteria. The accrediting bodies or agencies could be governmental or private.
Accreditation is an assessment conducted by external assessing bodies to check whether a programme or an institution meets acceptable minimum standards or requirements set by assessing bodies and qualifies for a certain status (Eaton, 2015;
Schwarz & Westerheijden, 2004). According to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA, 2020), it is an evaluation of the quality of HLIs and programmes.
Usually, the outcome of the accreditation process is awarding the status of recognition (a yes or no decision) and sometimes issuing a licence to operate for a certain limited validity period (Vlăsceanu et al., 2007). When accreditation is linked to the approval of the institution or the programme to operate, it is usually called licensing (as in, for example, the current Ethiopian accreditation system). Although the emphasis on each of the two activities is different, they share the same goal, namely assuring educational quality.
According to Harvey (2004), accreditation is awarding of a status, appropriateness or legitimacy to an HLI, one or more programmes of the institution or to a module of study with a certain time limit until the re-accreditation period. Accreditation is an assessment of a programme or an institution by an accrediting body, to determine whether a threshold standard is met to qualify for a certain status or for granting a licence to operate. It uses evaluation and assessment methods to make an explicit decision on whether a programme or an institution fulfils particular quality standards. For the HLIs, obtaining accreditation may have implications for securing permission to operate and granting confidence in the eligibility of students (Aksu, 2018; Stura, Gentile, Migliaretti,
& Vesce, 2019). The accreditation process is based on a predetermined set of existing quality benchmarks and criteria, and the robustness of these criteria and benchmarks depends on the decision or guiding regulation of the accrediting body. Therefore, it is vitally important to set robust accreditation criteria that value quality education.
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Generally, the accreditation process (for status or licensing) involves three steps. If it is for status, the first step is the submission of supporting evidence and a self- evaluation document conducted by the institution or academic programme/s based on criteria and standards set by the accrediting body. If it is for licensing, the letter of application and all the necessary standard documents set by the accrediting body are submitted to the accrediting body. Step two is a study visit carried out by a team of professionals in the field selected by the accrediting body and an assessment report based on the visit including a recommendation to the accrediting body. The last step is the final judgement and decision based on the assessment report forwarded by the team for the institution and other concerned bodies. Accreditation for status by external bodies is either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis depending on national regulatory requirements. Countries use accreditation results for various purposes. They can be the basis for granting government subsidies, or for informing the public about the performance of the HLIs on assuring quality education, or for further improving the educational services of the HLIs – or for mixed purposes (Padua, 2003).
3.5.2 Assessment
Assessment refers to all techniques applied to judge the performance or achievement of an organisation, group or individual (Harvey, 2020). Assessment, in terms of higher education, is the grading or ranking of HLIs by evaluating their performance in terms of quality achievement (Dill, 2000). The output of an assessment is a quantitative judgement based on grade (in numeric, descriptive or literal form). The grading system may be a two-point scale or a pass or fail boundary (Komotar, 2020). The terms quality assessment, review, and evaluation in many instances are used as synonyms.
Grading or ranking of HLIs has been practised for many years at international, regional and national levels. Such practice creates positive competition among HLIs and contributes to assuring quality education. According to Westerheijden (2014), high- ranking institutions can gain more resources from the government (for example, research funding), from students (for example, increased tuition fees), and from third parties (for example, research and scholarship funding). Quality assurance methods and rankings are complementary tools. The ranking is the representation of the HLI’s performance level in terms of quantitative values based on an evaluation conducted by an external body (Westerheijden, 2014).
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Quality assessment involves mechanisms and activities that are performed by an external body in order to evaluate the practices, processes and services implemented by HLIs to assure quality education (Komotar, 2020). Essential features of using and defining the concept of quality assessment are 1) the methods (site visits, self- assessment, assessment by peer review); 2) the context, which is national or institutional; 3) the mechanisms (such as rewards, structures, policies, cultures); 4) the levels (system, individual, institution, department); and 5) certain quality values such as academic and pedagogical values (focusing on academic staff skills in their classroom teaching practices), managerial values (focusing on systems and procedures), traditional values (focusing on the subject field), and employment values (emphasising learning outcomes and graduate output features) (Vlăsceanu et al., 2007).
3.5.3 Quality audit
In the context of higher education, the term audit is defined as a process that checks whether systems are in place to assure educational quality and outcomes (Harvey, 2020). The audit verifies the extent to which an HLI is attaining its own implicit or explicit objectives (Leiber et al., 2015). According to Harvey and Askling (2003), a quality audit is a system (internal or external) that is used to check whether the existing quality assurance mechanisms of HLIs are appropriately applied to assure quality education, based on given standards.
Auditing the quality of higher education can be conducted internally or externally. The internal quality audit is carried out by the institution itself, whereas the external audit is conducted by external bodies. The output of an internal quality audit is a self-evaluation document that depicts the weaknesses and strengths of the institution, and the goal is quality improvement. The output of the external quality audit is an external quality audit report, and the goal is quality enhancement for the institution and information about the performance of the institution to concerned external stakeholders for further action.
Usually, the international practice of external audit is a validation of the self-evaluation document prepared by the HLIs. The objective of an external quality audit is to establish whether the claims of the HLIs regarding achieving quality are correct (Shuiyun, 2016; Seyfried & Pohlenz, 2018). Unlike assessment or accreditation, the objective of an audit is not to check the HLI’s programmes, resources and activities
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comprehensively. Rather, it focuses on the existing processes and systems employed by the HLI in order to enhance and assure the quality of education (Leiber et al., 2015;
Dill, 2000). In most countries, the objective of a quality audit is to enhance the quality of education offered in the HLI; it is not for ranking, punishment or reward.
3.5.4 Peer review
Peer reviews are exercised as a method of quality assurance by many HLIs. Peer review involves a group of external well-regarded academics in a particular field conducting an assessment visit to the respective institution or programme with the objective to enhance the quality of education (Zawada, 2019; Harman, 1998). The teams of academics who are involved in peer review activities are usually from HLIs in the same discipline. In recent practice, other professionals working in business or industry have also been included as members of a peer review team. The opinion of peer academics is more likely to be heard by their companions and can have an inspiring effect on the performance of the internal operations of an institution (Kis, 2005). However, the previous working experience and deep knowledge of the higher education system that peer reviewers possess may have an influence on the outcome of the evaluation report (Harvey, 2002). It is preferable to use experienced and knowledgeable reviewers for the benefit of the institution.