Quality Assurance of Transnational Education in the English‐speaking Caribbean

Abstract

An examination of national and regional developments relating to quality assurance and accreditation systems in the three main countries having a campus of the University of the West Indies, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, provides an appreciation of some of the emerging provisions in the region to respond to the concerns of the stakeholders of the higher education sector as they relate to the quality of transnational education. The specific issues addressed include: (i) national accreditation councils and the monitoring of imported education; (ii) domestic regulations for setting qualifications, quality standards and licenses for the quality of both imported and exported education programmes; (iii) provisions for monitoring the quality assurance programmes of foreign providers and the equivalence of programme content to that delivered in other jurisdictions; (iv) collaboration between local and foreign providers and relevance to local needs; (v) the importance of a regional accreditation mechanism. The paper concludes with a projection of future developments in arrangements to monitor the quality of transnational education in the region.

Keywords:

• accreditation
• Caribbean Community and Common Market
• quality assurance
• the university of the West Indies
• transnational education