Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.2 The accreditation systems for quality assurance
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Students in Europe, for example in Barcelona, Spain, had demonstrations for anti-Bologna. They are against the process for the privatization of universities, and the devaluation of degrees. Paul Bennett, a vice-president of the Pan-European structure of Educational International stated that other regional relationships will follow the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process posed a threat to US and developing Asia.
This is what Bennett said: “higher education systems elsewhere are responding”.
2.2 The accreditation systems for quality assurance
2.2-1 Importance of quality assurance
Following the formation of educational networks in the world, the equivalence of educational standards and quality assurance become important issues for mutual recognition of degrees. This goal can be reached by the formation of accreditation systems. The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) Policy Forum was supported by the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In the information note of its 2005 policy forum, the background of establishing a regional integration process for educational accreditation was declared (Information notes, IIEP, 2005).
In this information note, it was pointed out that higher education is expanding for both the developed and developing countries. For the developed countries, higher education provided part of the national innovation system. On the other hand, the social demand for higher education in developing countries is very high. Since the state cannot have enough financial capacity for higher education expansion, liberation of public sector in many countries resulted in rapid growth in the private provision particularly in the developing countries. Higher education is changing into a private
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good rather than the benefits of the whole society. An external quality assurance (EQA) system for higher education is essentially required.
It was stated that the effect of globalization was enhanced by the information and communication technology. Transnational education, distance learning and mobility of professionals are becoming more and more popular. The concern of compatibility of educational standards and the international market for accreditation services are emerging.
There was a creation of European Higher Education Area through the Bologna Process. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under the World Trade Organization (WTO) was developing another international market for higher education services. From these actions in recent years, it is clearly observed that the design of an EQA system is actually needed for an international good practice. This design should also be in line with the policy of each state in a regional network.
Mok (2003) stated that the character and function of higher education in East Asia countries (Hong Kong, Taiwan and China) have been changed due to the effect of globalization and the evolution of knowledge-based economy. Under the inevitable trend of globalization, there are decline of state and territory, also the governance without government. The role of the state changed from one-way command and control to the social-political governance model. It is also transformed from a provider of welfare to the builder of market. The role of the universities acted less as critics of society, but functioned as supply of qualified manpower for market demand.
The author discussed that there are common challenges for the higher education development in the three countries: (1) Comprehensive review of education systems
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and fundamental reforms. (2) Policies of decentralization and educational governance.
(3) The marketization and privatization of higher education.
Firstly, all countries have comprehensive review systems for higher education. In Hong Kong, it is conducted by the University Grants Committee (UGC). Taiwan has reviewed the higher education since the 1990s to improve the efficiency and effectiveness. The State Education Commission (SEC) performs the guiding and monitoring for the whole sector of higher education in China.
There is a common change in the Chinese society: the adoption of a decentralization policy. Taking Taiwan as an example, the state control model has been replaced by the state supervision pattern. Universities have more autonomy to operate and manage their institutions. This liberalization (song-bang), however, does not mean the total withdraw of the state. The government is still the major provider of education services. In Hong Kong, the UGC also maintain a close watch over the individual performance of institutions.
All three countries are affected by the tide of marketization and privatization.
This reduces the financial burden of the state, and created market-related strategies between university sector and business sector. The multiple channels of higher education development in Taiwan enable the government to provide only 75 to 80 percent of the total national higher education budget. The rapid expansion of private higher education in Taiwan also causes the concern for assuring the quality.
2.2-2 Different opinions on accreditation
Although accreditation system has been emphasized to assure the quality of
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higher education, there are still many arguments if the accreditation is really helpful for various professional fields. Discussions from business schools are taken as examples in this section. Julian and Ofori-Dankwa (2006) described the accreditation process for business schools, and discusses the disadvantages of it to the strategic decision making. Although the discussion is for business schools, their arguments are also valuable to the general accreditation processes for other academic fields.
The authors firstly introduced the three major accreditation organizations for business school: the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), and the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE). The AACSB was founded in 1916 and has more than 670 member educational institutions by late 1990s. ASBSP, founded in 1988, and IACBE, founded in 1998, also has more than 369 and 65 members, respectively. These three agencies have different areas of emphasis. AACSB is the mostly renowned one all over the world. Several Taiwanese business schools have joint its accreditation program.
ACBSP has a more teaching-oriented emphasis, and IACBE has put more attention on the outcomes rather than the inputs. All three agencies require the business schools have their clearly defined education missions. The business schools have to provide supporting data to demonstrate that their curriculum, activities, modes of instruction, course offerings, research productivities and facilities can reflect their stated missions.
The authors argued that accreditation might not be good to business school for the strategic decision making, mainly because we are facing a discontinuously changing society. They ascribed the accreditation agencies to “accreditocracy” as these agencies are better suited for the continuous environment. The authors pointed
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out two trends for the higher education in business schools: the first trend toward turbulence, and the second toward “accreditocracy”.
The authors stated that the traditional business schools are in a stable and continuous environment. They have destabilizing factors due to the modern technologies such as internet, non-classroom distant education enrollment, and market-driven corporate universities. This is what the authors called the discontinuous and turbulent environment. The authors also blamed the trend toward
“accreditocracy” because the accreditation agencies require “formalization, documentation, hard data use and continuous improvement”.
The authors stated that accreditation is a “formal and systematic process to develop, monitor, evaluate and revise the substance and delivery of curricula”
(AACSB, 2004). The business schools have to perform their assessments in a formalized structure. The authors indicated, however, that the market is highly dynamic and turbulent. They need rapid responses and it is “likely to be inadvertently curtailed by the formalized assessment processes” (Zaheer and Zaheer, 1995).
The authors discussed the second item of documentation for external accountability. This means that a written self-evaluation report and necessary supporting documentation are required from the accreditation agency. The authors indicated their doubt that the performance data collected from stakeholders might result in the customer-led of business schools. The authors gave an example that if Sony depends on the feedback from customers, the product of Walkman would not be developed. This means that “the customer doesn’t know, or couldn’t express a product that doesn’t exist” (Dreyfack, 1981). The authors hence stated that documentation
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The so-called “latent” need should not be ignored. The authors introduced another example of the Wallace Company that went bankrupt by taking too much attention on documentation (Hill, 1993).
The third concern of the authors is the use of hard data. Hard data are quantifiable, numerical and objective evidences. They are generally presented by tabulation or statistical summarization. Accredited programs gathered these data from students, graduates and stakeholders as the outcome-based assessment. The authors argued that these hard data might bring negative influence on innovation in the discontinuous environment. They expressed that “strategic decision makers have difficulty knowing what data are, or are going to be, relevant for the future, thus rendering unclear the boundary between what is signal and what is noise”. The authors claimed that soft data is important in the new and potentially unpredictable trend (Barr et al., 1992).
Finally, the authors stated their opinion on the continuous improvement that is one feature of all accreditation agencies. The authors stated that “accreditation standards seek to instill significant improvement over time through continuous and cumulative, rather than episodic processes” (Kerby and Weber, 2000). In the rapidly changing and turbulent world, consistent major changes are desired by the authors.
The authors recommended that either theoretical or empirical academic researches for the accreditation process should be conducted. This conclusion is also needed for other fields than the business schools, and is in agreement with the motivation of this study.
Zammuto (2008) published a response to the paper of Julian and Ofori-Dankwa
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(2006). Zammuto concluded that accreditation is beneficial to business schools by two major reasons: (1) the accredited institutions gained clarity about the markets they can serve and the services they can offer, (2) the accredited institutions differentiated themselves in quality from other schools, and increased their potential to attract students.
Zammuto stated the rise of accreditation agencies in the world. In the first 75 years of AACSB, it standards focused on the “inputs” such as the resources, faculty quantifications and curriculum. The AACSB accredited institutions tended to be larger and research-oriented schools. The other agency, ACBSP, was later founded with mission-based and more teaching-oriented accreditation standards. This is a change of the “one-size-fits-all” accreditation model of the original AACSB. The AACSB finally adopted the flexible and mission-based standards in 1991. The IACBE further changed towards the outcomes-driven direction (Roller et al., 2003).
Zammuto stated that the educational accreditation is similar to the diffusion of ISO quality standards into various countries. He quoted the words of Guler et al.
(2002) that “Firms in country B may learn from firms in country A (ISO certified) how to make their products more attractive”, and firms in country B may feel “the risk of loosing export markets or import resources in a competing country”. Similar to the ISO certification, when one business school is accredited, the other schools would like to follow. The author takes China as an example that five business schools obtained accreditation by the end of 2006, and “over twice that number were in the accreditation pipeline”. The author made the conclusion that the mission-driven accreditation is beneficial for business schools because it “explicitly answered two questions: who are our customers and what services do we provide for them”.
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Romeo (2008) presented another paper to respond what Julian and Ofori-Dankwa claimed in 2006. The author stated that AACSB facilitated the strategies of business schools, and encouraged the flexibility and creativity. He also holds a contrary viewpoint that the documentation of AACSB provided values to the performance of business schools.
Romeo showed the program growth profiles for the undergraduate and MBA programs from year 2000 to 2006 according to the AACSB’s DataDirect. The data presented that four program categories (distance learning, online program, off-campus program, partnership program) had increasing trend. The author stated that the diversity of accredited schools cannot be possible if the accreditation inhibited flexibility. The author disagreed with Julian and Ofori-Dankwa about the word
“accreditocracy” that they used in 2006. He stated that “it is hard to imagine any organization that would reward the accomplishment of major performance goal without verifiable evidence”. The accreditation doesn’t require useless paperwork as so called bureaucracy. Data collection is “useful for the school’s strategic planning and decision making”. The author pointed out that accreditation is a baseline for quality control and continuous improvement. This is an important feature and should be recognized by all programs of higher education.