QUALITY ASSURANCE IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION



QUALITY ASSURANCE IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Russel C. Jones, Ph.D., P.E.

President

World Expertise LLC

Bethany S. Jones, Ph.D.

President

Center for Quality Assurance in International Education

ABSTRACT

With increasing interaction of commerce, trade and education across national borders, needs for measures of the quality of education in a given country or region are growing each year. This need and desire for quality assurance in the international arena is heightened as newly expansive countries in the education field join the ranks of major providers of higher education.

This paper provides the rationale for strong quality assurance systems for higher education as a factor in enhancing global interactions, and makes recommendations for countries and regions which do not yet have effective systems in place. In particular, it describes developments of interest to engineering educators and recommends a developmental approach to the institution of quality assurance and accreditation systems in developing countries.

Quality assurance through accreditation

Once upon a time quality assurance in international higher education was largely dominated by the formal tradition of accreditation in the United States, a system that largely staved off close government oversight of colleges and universities by those institutions’ adherence to carefully crafted processes of self-study and peer evaluation. Along with regional accreditation, which focused on institutions, professional or specialized accreditation in fields such as medicine, engineering and law grew rapidly in power and prestige starting in the 1950s. Along the way, US business went through waves of quality assurance fads such a total quality management, and individual higher education institutions dabbled in adopting those processes. But the fact is that quality assurance has been equated with formal accreditation by a recognized body. Today, CHEA, the US Council for Higher Education Accreditation, based in Washington, DC, recognizes sixty organizations as authorized to grant accreditation (1).

This framework of accreditation/quality assurance remains intact today in the US, although distance education, a consumer mentality applied to education, and the growing influence of international ranking systems, are placing pressure on accreditation agencies to move beyond their traditional roles in quality assurance and accreditation and to respond to growing demand for information accessible to the general public. But the biggest challenges to all systems of accreditation/quality assurance reside in the globalization of higher education.

International agreements in engineering education

An early manifestation of the influence of globalization on higher education quality assurance was the 1989 formation of the Washington Accord (2), an agreement between the engineering quality assurance agencies in six developed English speaking countries to recognize each other’s accreditation systems as equivalents to their own. This development was motivated by the increasing mobility of engineering graduates across international borders. The process leading to the Accord was long and detailed – each of the six countries visited all of the other countries, examining in depth their engineering accreditation systems and the resulting quality of graduates. The Accord does not attempt to force identical standards or processes, but instead recognizes that a solid quality assurance mechanism is in place in the other countries, and that the outcomes of the education process are equivalent. This has significant implications for bachelor’s level graduates in a given member country applying for graduate study in one of the other countries, and perhaps more importantly in recognizing the degree as equivalent in the application process for professional engineering registration in another member country.

The original six countries in the Washington Accord – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom – were approached by other countries wanting to join as members. To date an additional seven countries have been admitted as signatories -- Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Africa – and five additional countries have provisional status, in the pipeline -- Germany, India, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.

Following the original success of the Washington Accord model for engineering baccalaureate programs, two additional accords have been developed (2):

• The Sydney Accord commenced in 2001 and recognizes substantial equivalence in the accreditation of qualifications in engineering technology programs, which are normally of three years duration.

• The Dublin Accord is an agreement for substantial equivalence in the accreditation of tertiary qualifications in technician engineering programs, which are normally of two years duration. It commenced in 2002.

Thus the education programs for the primary members of the engineering team, and their quality assurance systems, have a growing pattern of recognition and equivalency as the global market for engineering talent reduces the importance of national boundaries.

European developments

As a consequence of various forms of unification on the European continent, education leaders there began a process of harmonization of higher education – including its quality assurance – with the 1999 Bologna Declaration (3). The original declaration was made at a meeting of the ministers of education of 29 European countries – a number that has now swelled to include 47 countries.

The overarching aim of the Bologna Process is to create a European Higher Education Area based on international cooperation and academic exchange. The European Higher Education Area is intended to facilitate mobility of students, graduates and higher education staff, and to assure broad access to high-quality higher education. The mobility goal requires easily comparable degrees in a three tiered structure – bachelor-master-doctorate. The quality goal requires European cooperation in quality assurance of higher education with a view to developing comparable criteria and methodologies. To implement the quality assurance goal, the European Ministers of Education adopted in 2005 the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (4).

The quality assurance aspect of the Bologna Process was given legal status in 2008 with the establishment of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (5). This register provides information on quality assurance agencies that are in substantial compliance with the common European framework.

One observer, Chris Lorenz, states that "the basic idea behind all educational EU-plans is economic: the basic idea is the enlargement of scale of the European systems of higher education, ... in order to enhance its 'competitiveness' by cutting down costs”(6). The interest in almost all countries of the world in developing “knowledge based societies” to be economically competitive in the current global economy is a significant driving force for cross-border education developments, quality assurance, and mutual recognition.

One model – ABET

The United States engineering quality assurance body, ABET Inc. (7), serves as a significant model for other such organizations throughout the world. It was originally established in 1932 as the Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD), an engineering professional body dedicated to the education, accreditation, regulation and professional development of engineering professionals and students in the United States. Its name was changed to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology in 1980 to recognize its primary role as accreditation and in 2005 shortened to ABET Inc.

It began international activities in 1979 when ECPD signed its first Mutual Recognition Agreement with the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. In successive years ABET entered into many Memorandums of Understanding with other countries, and was a consultant to both fledgling and established international accreditation boards. It developed a substantial equivalence program to evaluate international programs against its US–based criteria, and recognized many universities in other countries as equivalent to its accredited programs in the United States. In 2005 ABET decided to phase out the substantial equivalency approach, and to move directly to full accreditation of qualified international programs that sought its approval. ABET’s non-U.S. accreditation visits are conducted using the same accreditation criteria and policies and procedures as its U.S. visits. Any organization aspiring to engage in international accreditation would do well to keep in mind that it took ABET a full twenty-six years to prepare itself to engage fully in international accreditation.

ABET currently accredits over 3100 programs in engineering, computing, applied science, and technology education in more than 600 colleges and universities worldwide, utilizing over 2000 volunteers from its 29 member societies. Having started international accreditation visits in 2007, it currently recognizes programs in Bahrain, Chile, Columbia, Egypt, Germany, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Developmental approach to quality assurance

Over the coming decades the accreditation/quality assurance universe in higher education is likely to become more complex as higher education itself evolves at an increasingly rapid pace. The tension – already present – between aspirations for excellence and the achievement of such excellence is bound to rise. A professional or specialized program in a university that itself does not have a robust institutional culture and practice of quality assurance will invariably require collegial support and training in order to benchmark itself against international standards. While this support and training can frequently be obtained through tapping networks of colleagues, there is at least one model of an organization that attempts to bridge the gap between quality assurance agencies that are now transitioning themselves into international activities, and institutions and programs that would like to be formally recognized for their serious efforts to achieve parity of excellence while those agencies deliberate on appropriate parameters and procedures

The Center for Quality Assurance in International Education (CQAIE), based in metropolitan Washington DC, was founded in 1991 largely in response to increasing interest in quality assurance on the part of institutions, agencies and governments outside of the United States (8). “The Center assists countries in the development or enhancement of quality assurance systems for post-secondary education (including higher education and occupational/vocational training) through work with ministries, national quality assurance bodies and institutions. Its staff provides assistance at various stages: design (including drafting legislation or developing national policy); strategic planning at an institutional or systemic level for quality assurance; implementation (including national or institutional training programs) and evaluation (including the external international review of national systems and individual institutions)”(8). 

Since its founding in 1991 by the late Dr. Marjorie Peace Lenn, the Center has worked in-country with at least two-thirds of the countries with national quality assurance systems and many others – some 37 countries in all – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. The Center has worked through various ministries related to higher education, vocational/occupational training, labor and health.

As an example of the activities of CQAIE, in the early 2000’s a number of colleges of education in universities outside of the US expressed interest in being recognized as on a qualitative par with accredited US programs. The well-known US-based National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (9) (NCATE) had limited its activities to teacher education units housed in institutions that were regionally accredited in the US. The Center worked with NCATE to create a system of international recognition (not accreditation) for international institutions, using NCATE standards, and NCATE trained and experienced reviewers. The International Recognition of Teacher Education (IRTE) began operating in 2003. IRTE deliberately adopted a developmental approach to quality assurance. Institutions are carefully screened as to their readiness before entering into candidacy status. A model timetable sets expectations for timely progress toward a decisive on-site visit by an international team. Experienced peer consultants are suggested upon request to help institutions prepare themselves. Seminars were run to introduce faculty and administrators to the central principles and practices of quality assurance. And equally importantly, the US based teacher educators involved with IRTE have been prepared to work skillfully across cultures in the implementation of a US model of quality assurance. The goal has been to help international teacher education programs to raise their level of excellence using as a standard the hallmarks recognized by a US national agency.

Since 2003 the Center has worked with nine institutions, mostly in the Middle East and in Latin America, with two having achieved full recognition to date. As educational reform in primary, secondary and vocational education has become an acknowledged driver of modernization and progress in developing countries, formal quality assurance in university teacher education programs has become of greater interest around the globe. While NCATE, along with many other professional and specialized accrediting organizations, including ABET, have been actively involved in examining their evolving role in international accreditation, IRTE is a way by which institutions around the world can benefit from the expertise of peers who are experienced and exacting accreditors and at the same time colleagues committed to helping them when they make a serious commitment to achieving standards of international quality. The process creates a culture of quality assurance, self-study and direct international involvement, all of which are of value to both the program and the large institution.

Complexity as institutions morph internationally

As globalization of all aspects of higher education proceeds rapidly, so does the obligation to create new structures to adequately assess quality in ways that satisfy more probing and sophisticated questions about the merits of institutions, programs, diplomas and graduates. Some recent developments in higher education serve as a reminder of what new challenges will present themselves in the realm of quality assurance in the near future. In late 2010 New York City asked for proposals on how the city could become a major player in applied science and engineering (10). Eighteen proposals were submitted by twenty-seven institutions and organizations from around the world, prompting a New York Times blogger to headline: “The next engineering school in New York City could be a satellite campus of a university in Finland, Korea or Switzerland. . .” (11). It is too early to tell how this process will unfold, but it promises to pose challenges to existing quality assurance methods and systems. As disciplines and professions becoming more intertwined, especially at the graduate level, but also at the undergraduate level, how will the territories in which accreditors act be defined? If quality assurance loses all semblance of a collegial commitment to excellence and instead becomes only a way to distance a limited number of “world class institutions” from all the rest, what has been gained and what lost? And as technologies make access to higher learning easier, and students become increasingly mobile, will systems of accreditation/quality assurance that are focused on traditional institutions and defined programs shift the focus more to individual learners? No one can stand on the sidelines of these developments: perhaps our best posture is to remain faithful to collegiality, creativity, and capacity building by creating the bridges to the future of quality assurance, while acknowledging that those bridges will change over time.

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References (Note: all websites last accessed on 21 March 2011)

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Russel C. Jones, Ph.D., has more than 45 years of experience in higher education, as faculty member, administrator, university president, and international advisor. He served on the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as department chair at the Ohio State University, Dean of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Academic Vice President at Boston University, and President at the University of Delaware. After his successful US career, he served as Founding President at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, then as Senior Advisor at Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, both in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Jones is active in professional society and international activities, having served as an officer in the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society for Engineering Education, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations—and as President of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. He consults extensively in the areas of higher education in the international arena, and in developing human capacity for economic development. He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees from Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Bethany S. Jones, Ph.D., is President of the Center for Quality Assurance in International Education, located in metropolitan Washington, DC (USA).  She has more than 40 years of experience in domestic and international education. Dr. Jones has particular expertise in the education of women in the Middle East, quality assurance and accreditation, higher education reorganization, entrepreneurship education, faculty performance reviews, curriculum development, and preparation of engineers for international practice. She has held faculty appointments and administrative positions at Cleveland State University, the University of Delaware, Missouri State University, and then served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at James Madison University. Most recently, Dr. Jones was Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University. Continuing her work in the Middle East, she was a Senior Advisor to the Executive Affairs Authority of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, providing policy guidance and strategic implementation in university-industry relations, creation of new universities, building a knowledge economy, and financial management of higher education initiatives. She holds a BA from Chestnut Hill College and MA and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University.

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