Capacity and willingness in higher education accreditation: when incentives are not enough

ABSTRACT

Accreditation as a form of quality assurance has spread worldwide. As a result, the public and research interests have targeted the policies that developed agencies and procedures and the responses and effects of accreditation on higher education organizations and programs. However, studies on accreditation have not analyzed two core aspects: the capacity and willingness of the accreditation agencies and the programs to perform their functions. Through qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the regulatory agencies and universities, this study explores the issue of capacity and willingness in higher education accreditation by studying the functioning of an accreditation agency in Argentina and the responses of organizations and programs to the accreditation process. The results show that three key factors may affect accreditation monitoring, enforcement, and compliance: administrative burden, inadequate resources, and information availability. The findings are relevant beyond the national context and have research and policy implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy
• regulation
• accreditation
• compliance
• capacity
• willingness

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the article. All views expressed in this article are those of the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Regulatee refers to a person or organization subject to regulation. Regulatory studies differentiate between regulators and regulatee. For the sake of simplicity and coherence, this study uses this differentiation.

2 This article adopts the use of the term ‘higher education institution’ instead of ‘higher education organization’ due to its widespread use in scholarly work and beyond.

3 In Argentina, undergraduate university degrees automatically grant a professional license to the degree holder. Unlike in the US, in Argentina, teachers, lawyers, or even medical doctors do not have to undergo professional certification exams after graduating. Only undergraduate degrees reserve certain professional practices for their graduates but graduate programs do not serve this purpose.