With more than 20 universities and 300 colleges, Saudi Arabia is finally getting around to implementing a plan for quality assurance in education. It is requiring post-secondary schools to obtain accreditation from a nation-wide organization, the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment, reports Arab News. The article does not get into what measures will be used to assess the quality of education, unfortunately.
Universities face disqualification over academic standards
Hassna’a Mokhtar | Arab NewsJEDDAH: The secretary-general of Saudi Arabia’s academic assessment body warned universities lacking appropriate quality certification could lose their license and government funding in the future, local newspapers reported on Monday.
Abdullah Al-Musallam of the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA) confirmed three universities had already applied to receive the quality certification.
They are the King Saud University in Riyadh, King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and Taibah University in Madinah. Al-Musallam said quality standards are determined according to each university’s objectives.
…
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
October:27:2009 - 20:59
Taken at face value this is great news and hopefully they will use measures that other universities use like: qualifications of professors; publications by professors; grants received by professors and departments; teaching evaluations by students; organization of teaching program for breadth, depth, and progression; pedagogical efforts by teaching staff; professional development for staff; degree of academic freedom (always dicey); international recognition and collaborations by faculty, and students, etc.
It could be great, a waste of time, or stifling. Hopefully it would be great!