5 Lessons Learned to Strengthen Accreditation

Sarosh holds a master’s degree and a PMI-Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA) certification, and has more than 18 years of experience in leadership, quality assurance, strategic planning, project management and data analysis and reporting.

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Topics: Education, Quality

Getting and staying accredited as a higher education institution is vital because it impacts student recruitment, faculty and staff quality, research grants, collaboration opportunities and even community engagement initiatives.

Accreditation projects are focused on quality assurance and risk management, and help institutions to self-evaluate, reassess, refine, collaborate and continuously improve. Even if the institution is accredited, it still conducts activities and operations that continually support or enhance internal quality assurance.

Whether its international, national or regional accreditation, the whole project serves as a comprehensive learning and assessment journey that highlights strengths, spots areas for improvement, and highlights opportunities for growth.

Below are some of the key lessons I have learned while accomplishing a full-scale accreditation project:

1. Self-evaluate: Drafting a self-study report does not merely mean compiling some text with evidences to prove that the institution is meeting a certain criterion in standards. It is more like taking on a journey of self-discovery and self-revelation to reflect on the best and worst in the current culture, policies, procedures, systems and services within the institution.

It is a kind of like a periodic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis in the form of a …

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