International framework on quality assurance and accreditation

Here's an article from Japan Today that mentions a proposed "international framework on quality assurance and accreditation" that is to be launched by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). I wonder whether it will have any impact?


Proposed international education rules target 'rogue' schools

 

And if it does have an impact, I wonder if that impact will be positive or negative.

If the intention is to suppress "rogue universities", how are these underperformers and flat-out scams going to be identified?

Will there be a new international accreditor of some kind? I doubt it. That would be a gargantuan job and it would step on too many political toes.

Will the new QA regime simply defer to the judgements of local education authorities? I expect that's the plan.

So, will the new international accreditation regime make any attempt to differentiate between credible national systems and those nations that offer easy "flag of convenience" accreditations, or for that matter, let domestic substandard schools flourish?

My suspicion is that UNESCO is going to be unwilling, for political reasons, to condemn any of its member states' education standards as inadaquate.

So, will this attempt to rid the world of rogue universities finally make the world safe for the "international mystery schools" that employ the "GAAP" scam? Will it end up creating a new international convention that requires signatories to recognize any school approved by any national government anywhere on earth, while driving all the competition from CA-approved schools and the like out of the international DL marketplace?

Political criteria of legitimacy are not the same thing as academic crieria of legitimacy. I'd hate to see the former shove the latter aside, and I fear that's what will end up happening unless the international higher education community stays very alert.

Bottom line: While international higher education quality assurance is a critically important subject, whether or not any proposed solutions represent real progress depends very much on the small print.

 

My experience of UNESCO is not encouraging. I served for six years on the UK's UNESCO National Committee for Social Science (two years as Chairman) and found UNESCO a most awful institution (true this was during the Cold War).

Its main probelm - as with all UN organisations - is that it is necessary under UN conventions of behaviour for each country to accept on equal terms that each member country's government issues authoritative and not to be questioned statements on its internal affairs. Thus, if country a) says that University B is accredited then this must be accepted by all other UN members to mean that University B is of the same status as, say, Oxford (UK) or Harvard (US) or the Sorbonne (France), etc. The same applies to all economic and social statistics issued by each member government. Thus, if a country states that it has no political prisoners then it does not have any, or that is defence budget is 3 per cent then that is what it is even if it has the second largest army in the world.

Now, the idea that a UNESCO statement on accreditation of higher education means anything other than what is members assert, is laughable and meaningless. Even the fact that ALL UN members have agreed to abide by the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and by assertion do so, is 'accepted' as true for ALL members even by democratic governments that know this is a lie, so the chances of an authoritative 'accreditation' list emanating from UNESCO is anybody's guess.

I am not impressed.