Nursing homes in Australia and Ireland, Austrian school provinces, and the old telecommunications company Motorola may provide pointers on how to reform the higher education accreditation system, a new white paper argues.
Common to all of those organizations is that they have taken a “management-based” approach to quality assurance. Unlike the existing accreditation system in the U.S., which often takes the form of a once-in-a-decade paperworkathon culminating in a college being (or not being) reaccredited, such an approach emphasizes smaller, more frequent reviews, continuous improvement and peer benchmarking.
By using a management-based approach, the U.S. higher education accreditation system would be well positioned to handle an influx of alternative education providers and a larger shift toward quality assurance that places improving student outcomes front and center, the authors of the white paper argue.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/08/white-paper-explores-management-based-approach-accreditation