question regarding European "accreditation"

Hello everyone,

Newbie poster here. First, I'd like to say the Bear, et al team on the Bears' Guides are first rate; the information I've gained from those publications has been extremely valuable regarding my choices in pursuing a DL degree. I've also been reading through the threads at degreeinfo.com for several days (as a guest), and I'm quite impressed with the knowledge and discussions I've found.

Now, I turn to you for information, please. I'm currently teaching at a university in the United Arab Emirates. Many of my colleagues have mentioned/are interested in pursuing a doctorate (mainly in the field of education), but are unsure of how to do that from over here. As part of my service work for the university, I'm planning a discussion group-cum-presentation for next semester regarding earning a DL doctorate while teaching in the Middle East. I've been gathering a lot of info on this, not only from my own experiences, but also from this site, degree.net, and the Bears' guides (don't worry, y'all will be given proper references!).

I'm about done, but one piece of information has so far eluded me. Many of my colleagues are not from the U.S., and would be more interested in pursuing a degree from the U.K., Australia, Europe, etc., as this is where they hail from. Some will want to continue the expat life, while others will eventually want to return to their home countries. I'm still fuzzy as to whether there is any kind of British, or European, equivalent to RA in the U.S. While I have found information regarding EQUIS vs. AACSB accreditation on this board, as that addresses business programs, it's not really applicable to the field of education.

Could anyone please provide me with some information on this, and/or if accreditation concerns are as strong outside of the U.S. are they are within the States? I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,

Adrienne

 

Hopefully, I'm not the last word on this subject because my level of knowledge on this particular subject falls squarely into the "casual" category. In general, the countries you've mentioned don't follow the same sort of accreditation process. In the US, accreditation is done by the six Regional Accrediting agencies (and DETC, if you want to stretch that far) and there are a number of professional accreditators for things like business, psychology, and probably a bunch of others. In the UK, accreditation comes from the universities "Charter" which is granted by the government (in the cases of some of the older schools, "the government is some member of the Royal Family like the Queen) Maybe they're all "Royal Charters" but frankly, I don't see much news footage of Prince Charles doing university site visits, so I guess it's a function of the parlimentary government.
I think it's pretty much the same situation with Australia. As for Europe, despite the advent of the EU and the euro, it continues to be a loose collection of separate countries and there's nothing I can say that might be universally true. One unfortunate aspect of this forum is that it tends to be strongly "English speaking" in its orientation and so there's not much information shared about non-English speaking university programs. There was a brief discussion of programs in the Netherlands recently but this was because it was discovered that English was a common language of instruction in that country. It seems that you've read the Bears Guides and so I won't bother to list the schools that fall into your stated country categories. Suffice it to say that there are many choices. I hope this was even a bit helpful.
Jack

 

The Privy Council.

 

Generally, with the major exception of Germany, higher education is a matter for the national Ministry of Education in Europe (the Department for Education and Skills in the UK). In order to be a legal awarder of degrees within a country, you have to have approval from the ministry. In the case of Germany, education is the province of the Lander, but the standards are very much the same for all.

If you start at one of the following (for the three largest countries), you won't go too far wrong.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/recognisedukdegrees/
http://www.education.gouv.fr/sup/default.htm
http://www.campus-germany.de/english

Angela

 

Re: Re: question regarding European "accreditation"

Germany is not an exception at all.
The process of giving a university the right to call itself "university" and to legally grant degrees is also up to the national ministry of education (resp. the "under-authority": the state ministries). Since roughly 90 - 95 % of all universities (and polytechnics) in Germany are STATE universities, and only just a small number is private - but with national ministry allowance - up till now, the ministry is also still responsible for quality insurance and curricula proof, etc. - that what GB would call "royal charter" or the Americans "accreditation".
But the whole EU system, and therefore also Germany, is in a rapid process of change, and the national ministry of education introduced a so-called "accreditation council" board, which is responsible from now on to "accredit" private accreditation agencies (and giving them the national seal). Those private institutions will now begin to FURTHER accredit privately the universities in germany (and partly also in austria/switzerland). There are not many privately accredited schools and programs yet (quite a few in business related fields, but not so many in others), and the ministries are still responsible for the general quality insurance - as in the rest of the EU.

But, to conclude, also as in the rest of the EU, private accreditation agencies are commencing their work. Like e.g. for Business and Management programs the:
*FIBAA in Germany/Austria/Switzerland
*AMBA in England
*EQUIS/efmd in Belgium
etc.

All in all you can still say that EVERY EU state university (and its programs) IS ACCREDITED (although it might not have a private additional accreditation so far).

Greets,
T.

P.S.: The site you linked to to understand the German university system is a PRIVATE site, and therefore not 100 % reliable. I would suggest anyone: www.daad.de (click on the "English" button then in order to get English language). This one is the official state site on education.

 

Triggersoft,

Do you know how foreign titles will be evaluated in the future in Europe?? Would it be up to the EU state members to decide which foreign degrees are equivalent to those of Europe (like it happens now), the European Commision or any other interstate organ or up to those new accrediting agencies you mentioned?

Thanks a lot in advance

 

Thanks to all who have replied -- your information is very useful, and exactly what I need! It seems to me that accreditation issues are far less of a concern for anyone "attending" a non-U.S. school; once a university is opened (at least, a public one), it does so with the immediate blessings of the government. In other words, it starts out with immediate validation. Am I misinterpreting this? If I'm not mistaken, U.S. universities, even those that are public, always start out unaccredited, correct? Or are state universities given automatic accreditation just for being part of a state university system?

Regards,
Adrienne

 

Regularly, you are totally right.
It is a lot harder to open up a university in the EU than in the US, since there is a very extensive and long-lasting validation process before the opening. In Germany and Austira, e.g., there needs to be a a certain amount of money and/or government funding, a high number of full-time professors (having a "habilitation", meaning an advanced, 5-6 year postdoctoral degree!), and pre-evaluated curricula, etc., etc.
When a university gets approval (no matter if it´s a public or a private one, the standards are the same), it is automatically "accredited", but it get continuously proofed on a yearly (? IIRC) basis.

@ JLV: it is not clear yet. For the next years, it will be pretty certainly still the single states that decide, but this is said to change (but I reckon not before 2008 or 2010).

Greets,
Trigger

 

Dear Adrienne,

I'd advise that you should also talk about the utility of the degree in U.A.E. and in the surrounding GCC states, particularly if you have an Arabic audience, or people who may be (or wish to be) working for local governments. The GCC Ministries of Education have strange rules about the equivalencies of D.L. courses with traditionally offered courses. Often these rules are still to be finalised (I've had a few interesting conversations within Ministries, I could tell you about).

For example, some of our courses (University of London) are accepted if there is some element of local face-to-face tuition, but they are not accepted as equivalent if the student is an independent learner. Alternatively our postgraduate courses run by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are recognised for professional purposes by the UAE Ministry of Health but not by the UAE Ministry of Education.

Bear in mind that the University of London is one a well-respected University and has been involved with D.L. provision for some time. Many of those holding senior positions in GCC governments are also alumni of Colleges of the University of London. Therefore if our courses have recognition difficulties you can imagine the position of lesser-known universities (irrespective of their accreditation status in their home country).

Recognition by a GCC government is certainly not the be all and end all, especially if you work in the private sector. Even if you're in the public sector it may not be that important. I've had one education official tell me that his department would not recognise our courses, who then proceeded to ask me for the prospectuses for both our postgraduate Applied Educational Management and Leadership course as he would like to send some people on it.

Best of luck for the discussion group and hope this helps a bit.

Brendan Fawcett
Promotions Manager
University of London External Programme

P.S. A more useful site for UK education is http://www.educationuk.org this has distance learning and PHD search facilities of all (or supposedly all) UK universities.