Not necessarily as these Agencies do not always take into consideration the culture of the immediate society/institution. I know from experience in the Caribbean, some internationally funded projects at some institutions failed to meet accreditation standards and were not accredited by the International Agencies. In one instance that involved setting up a garment construction training institution with a workforce component, whereby trainees can work and study, the international accreditation standards required that the trainees/employees be searched everyday on leaving/entering the compound. Well, students were not use to such measures and did not subject themselves to these searches. The latter affected the success of the project negatively.

Best regards,

Debra

 It does not because most colleges do everything necessary in order to get accredited including staffs that are not resident in the school 

Accreditation agencies go by their own standards and criteria and thus they are always debatable. So is the case of rankings based on certain parameters. These are also debatable and no convergence may happen. The practice is to say "you define your goals or standards, meet the same, and furnish evidence to us". Hence the benchmark is not always the best, but what is possibly attainable. 

I do not think accreditation in any way improves the quality of education; but it is a good marketing tool for private investors / colleges

Seems the institute head quarters is in Bangalore, Karnataka itself.

http://www.naac.gov.in/

http://www.qcin.org/index.php

As per the mission statement and objectives they look quite reasonable.

The same in words of our beloved Ex-President/Missile man of India

Honorable President of India (Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam) assigns mission for QCI "The National Well Being"

"My definition of national prosperity index is equal to GDP including quality of life for all coupled with value system. It is essential to ensure that all the citizens are empowered with good quality of life encompassing nutritious foods, good habitat, clean environment, affordable health care, quality education with value system and productive employment leading to the comprehensive qualitative development of the nation.

There is a strong urge in our society to come out of century old "Developing Country" brand name to "Developed Country" status. To become developed country, we must have competitive edge in the international market. Quality is very essential to achieve this. We must use competition as an opportunity to improve our quality and to transform a technology importer to technology exporter".

QCI must become an organization serving the one billion people of the country. My best wishes to all for success in the mission of promoting prosperity through quality"

(excerpts from the speech of Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Honorable President of India inaugurating the 2nd National Quality Conclave held on February 9, 2007 at New Delhi)

Hope we see or our next generation "to come out of century old "Developing Country" brand name to "Developed Country" status.

Certainly it is possible if everybody work dedicatedly for Nation/Country's sake in spite of their selfishness.

Accreditation ranking does not completely reflect the real quality of an Institution. However, it may be a suitable method to avoid a very bad quality.

@Aloysius Sequeira how do you define quality of education. It has very broad meaning. Education is simply Knowledge. It should give enlightenment.

Broadly speaking it has become tool for employment.

For many people opening educational institutions has become a business. Few people work seriously/honestly. Some people least bothered even to follow professional ethics/complete business mind.

I believe, if literacy is increased automatically problems will be solved.

Not necessarily true. Accreditation was not available in the past and the outcomes of learning were almost perfect. However, it enhances paper work and documentation more than before. Quality as I understood from the old  ages to the present means that teaching methods that successfully help learners develop the knowledge and skills they will require in the current modern technology era. While accreditation is good in a way but not always reflects the quality of graduates. Ranking on another hand is not always reflects the quality. It depends on many other things. I like the answer of George Stoica.

If the institution is serious about improving the quality, the process of accreditation can play an important role. But if the goal is to somehow get the accreditation and manipulate things than it may not serve the purpose. I have been involved in inspection of facilities and capabilities by FAA and EASA in civil aviation sector and I have seen that an expert inspector can find some linkages in the paper trail to identify loopholes in the system. I think same would be true in academic line as well.

Hello Aloysius -

I would think you will need to stratify your question to gain a more focused  answer.  For example, do you mean undergraduate or graduate school education?  Which discipline?  A university might have an excellent engineering curriculum with world class faculty and research program funding support, but perhaps less so in other fields such as psychology or education.

If you look at the US News and World Report documentation on top Civil Engineering Graduate programs in the United States:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/civil-engineering-rankings?int=9d0e08&int=a06908

You will see that California Berkeley is ranked 1st at 4.7, University of Illinois Urbana is ranked 2nd at 4.6 and Stanford and University of Texas at Austin are tied at 3rd place with a score of 4.5.

However, what are these scores based on?   How sensitive are the scores - is 0.1 of a point really significant enough to differentiate between Civil Engineering Graduate Degree programs among Universities?  Keep in mind that Civil Engineering comprises several technical areas including:

Transportation

Construction

Materials

Structures

Geotechnical

Environmental

The Graduate Transportation Engineering program at UT is supported through the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) which comprises full time professional researchers and research fellows who work closely with faculty to guide students in conducting funded research and working with transportation agencies to implement research findings.   This is the practical side of civil engineering education - there is also the academic side - how many papers did your University Program present/ publish last year?  How many published research papers per faculty member?  per graduate student?  How much research funding did your University Program win last year through competitive proposals.  How many conferences, workshops or seminars did your University host?  Does your University host National Research Centers.....the list goes on and on.

At UT we have been challenged by the President of the University to increase number of journal publications to improve the University Ranking - however, I personally get much greater satisfaction working with students and practicing engineers to implement the student's research - to me, this is the real payoff - seeing how the student's work improves practicing engineer decision making ability, reducing time necessary for analyzing large, complex datasets, improving data visualization and integration, helping to improve safety for Texas, providing information to TxDOT Senior Management and the State Legislature for policy making and development of new laws.   How can a group of individuals tasked with evaluating a University program place a value of this type of direct application of research findings?

Thus, I think before a group can effectively evaluate a specific program within a University, the members must understand how the University operates as a part of society - what are the contributions of the University?   Educated students, yes - tomorrows professionals and leaders, yes....but right here an now these students are making contributions to improving engineering practice ....... thus, education involved three facets:

Knowledge

Understanding

Wisdom

I realize this is a long response, but one last comment.  Regardless how good a University is...in the end, the student 's desire to learn, to explore, willingness to take risks (to step out onto the stage and make that presentation that really scares them to make) , will have a greater effect on the quality of their 'education' than will the University they attend.   5, years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years  after a student graduates, how do we evaluate their 'success'?  By how much money they make?  By their job title?  Their personal happiness and improved ability to make good life choices?  By their contributions to the profession?   Their ethical and moral standards?    Thus, it might be more effective and accurate to evaluate and rank a University based on the life performance of its graduates.....though this would be much more difficult an undertaking. 

Hope this helps,

Dr. Mike Murphy

Accreditation of colleges is based on quality assessment process over two main steps: Internal assessment and external assessment.

Internal assessment is carried out by the college staff according to different criteria related to students, teachers, curriculum, research, infrastructure, strategy, environmental and international relationships, employability... The internal assessment report is examined in details by experts selected by the accreditation agency.

In a second step, experts carry out an external assessment on the ground in the college in order to verify and complete data and information given in the internal report.

At the end of the external assessment, experts elaborate a final report and propose the accreditation or no to the agency board.

I don't think personally that this process is perfect to reflect objectively the real quality of education in a college. But it has at least the advantage to verify required resources to insure education quality. It encourages also colleges to carry out assessment process and to know their strenghts and weaknesses. It gives more visibility to colleges and allow to better orient choices of potential students.

Accreditation indicates that the college has systems and is disciplined in following the systems. The quality of education depends on the capability and the mood of the teacher and also the grasping capacity of students. When the same teacher is teaching, why there should be different grades among the students? Why all are not getting the same marks in their examinations?

No doubt many accreditation are quality based. and ranking also depend on various accreditation. But I believe accreditation is not distributing on the bases of quality now a days, it depends on the network of the head of institution. So, there is not a true relation.  

Basically IQA and EQA go in tandem, based on a set of context, criteria and content, which difference across different countries. All these should be tied to the goals / obecjtives of the insitution within the context of quality aspirations and assessment within the context, criteria and content, which also differs across individual universities and disciplines. As such, the EQA only provides an outsider perspective of what can be verified and clarified within the context, criteria and content relative to the insituion goals and objectices. as such, it is a great outside perspective, but to lump them together into ranking is just the placing of the insitution performance on an objectice ruler of measure of where it stands in performance within the IDEALS of the criteira rather than ranking. But because of this "performance within the IDEALS of the criteira" you can compare relative perforamnce which might NOT convert to real ranking.

I tend to view accreditation exercises as a bit of a joke, at least in this country -- I have witnessed a few myself. The so-called accreditors come on previously announced   date or dates, asking questions, which are expected and a few unexpected ones.  They look at procedural documents... but what is the guarantee that the procedures described are indeed followed? Very little random check is done. So,  it is not difficult to get accreditation . For me, whether accredited or not, if the lecturers do a thorough job of teaching and assessing, eschewing multiple-choice and Mickey Mouse examination questions, one can expect a semblence of quality. If the syllabus is modern, comprehensive, then one can speak of quality.

You have said it rightly

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Accreditation agencies need to take into account the country-specific issues also and accordingly assess the institution. The practices, tools used, and the techniques of teaching, will vary from place to place. If the standards are mechanically applied, the ranking will be severely affected. Though the agencies or the certifying bodies do involve the local assessors, it is quite likely that "one size fits all" policy may be used. 

Most rankings, especially the rankings made by international organizations of good reputation, are based on research conducted by the respective colleges. Although such ranking may reflect the research standing of the college, it does not necessarily reflect the quality level of education offered there. I believe accreditation by fair national and international agencies reflects this level of education within these colleges. 

Mr Sequeira, I shall address the specific question you pose which is this:

 Do you feel the real quality of the education can be assessed in this short time and through quantification of complex variables involved in the teaching-learning  and research processes  in professional colleges?

The quick and direct answer is a big NO. I have seen such accreditation visits by "so-called "accreditors" here in The Netherlands. They come by prior announcement, so institutions have the opportunity to  tidy up. straighten things, create documents that should have been there a long while back. The accreditors then look to see if the process(es)  that is/are in place does follow what is described in the often hastily prepared documents. That is no way to determine quality. Quality checks must be done by unannounced, random checks... you then get real data and information. One of the things that they do here in The Netherlands is to talk to students; why would students already enrolled in a programme of studies  say anything critical ? They want their soon to be awarded degrees to be recognized. Remember  Goodhart's law?

Quantification of complex variables? Do they really do that in your country, at  your institution? If so, what variables are you thinking about? I am curious! Teaching is a two way process involving the teacher and the student. If the student is not trying his/her best, learning is unlikely to occur. When I was at university, I had lecturers not  so-called instructors of today. Lecturers lectured and i would furiously take notes. The real learning took place in my room in the late hours of the night.

Today, students expect to be spoon-fed and want to know " what is important for the exam". I would say to them "Everything... life and its problems do not depend upon what is important for the examination... trivial  things can appear and you must know the answers"; that reaction does not make me popular. Many of my colleagues ever ready to get into the good books of students woul te"ll  them: X is important, Y is not, C is extremely important, etc, etc." because if they (teachers)  did not play ball with students, that thing called SET or SETE ( Student Evaluation of Teachers or Student Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness) will be used against them by students**. I refuse as a matter of principle and I have to admit I do get bad SET or SETE rating from  the students -- the better students often rate me reasonably well. By the way, he library is a place infrequently visited.  I spent hundreds of hours in the library.  And the examinations? Multiple-choice questions with easily discernible answers. I prefer to set open essay type questions and quantitative questions for the more quantitative subjects -- such questions test learning -- the ability to analyze, to synthesize, to assses, to evaluate; MC questions test recall, mostly. 

As to research quality, I am very demanding, and mostly only the ambitious students would want to have me as their Master's degree research supervisor. To conclude, accreditations are  useless exercises and suggest at least here in The Netherlands that there is a minimum standard being met. It does not reflect quality as such. Research quality can  be better assessed by publication citations.  As  reviewer, I have noticed that poor qualty papers do get accepted simply because the reviewer was too hasty and was not rigorous enough. Think of all those papers that have had to be withdrawn or retracted. I think you know what I mean...

** various researchers have looked into the negative effects of students rating their teachers.

Accreditation quite often relies on self assessment which is later verified by the inspecting team. The competency and integrity of the the team members who check the documents and compare with the actual situation, matters most in assessing the quality. Rating and rankings are always debatable because an accurate assessment because of various factors may not happen.

It depends on the instituition and on the accredeting company.

But assessing the instituition before accreditation helps it improve in many aspects, regarding the syllabus improvment, instructors assessment, staff working and the list goes on and on. Some improvement can be done by preparing for the process but the accrediting company must be in certain high standards.

As debated across several platforms, accreditation and quality are two different things. The accreditation process goes by documentation, compliance with the procedures, systematic maintenance of records and uniformity and consistency across different functions and processes. While all these can foster quality, it is no guarantee that quality exists. Because quality demands many inputs the most important being dedicated and quality conscious people. 

Audit + Assessment + Accreditation = Assurance of Quality is the standard, followed and practiced norm. If done conscientiously and committed by both parties, the assessor and the assessed as a mechanism towards accountability of oneself and one's institution (individually & collectively) towards society and stakeholders, the quality journey is well started, well trodden with a "purpose" and well achieved. Quality in itself is subjective in nature, but we try to be objectives by trying to measure them objectively based on certain standards and criteria. The bottom line is that what we do and how we do it conscientiously and in a committed way is what counts and contributes.

Accreditation process helps HEIs to go through its processes (self-assessment). It helps to make strategic plan and formulate necessary policy guidelines to setup the requisite procedures for the benefits of stakeholders (students, parents, faculty members, industry and alumni). The compliance of accreditation criteria ensures public that an higher education institution (HEI)/programme has fulfill the minimum requirements of quality education. It is true that before accreditation also many HEIs were delivering the best education. However in today's world where HEIs are growing as mushroom's growth, no doubt accreditation status helps to differentiate the quality of accredited and non-accredited institution. Also in today's competitive world, where education is a global phenomena, it helps in benchmarking of processes with top universities and to initiate best practices.

It has been said that the grades are not as objective as one expects form such a process

No. Have a look please at:

"Accreditation agencies have been forced to play a regulatory role for which they were never designed—we need a new model going forward.

Everyone knows that institutions of higher education need to be accredited. Accreditation serves both students and the public good by providing the first indicator of a legitimate institution of higher education. But recent investigations of for-profit colleges and universities have revealed a problem in the accreditation process. Far from being an ironclad guarantee of higher education excellence, accreditation represents a binary evaluation of whether or not an institution satisfies the standards of an independent, non-governmental agency. Moreover, the agency is a membership club, a fraternity where obscure rules and rituals define the process. With the stakes being incredibly high—success equals access to federal financial aid programs—it is no wonder that accreditation has been accused of failing to protect students from the excesses of the for-profit sector.

We need, however, to look to the history of accreditation in the United States to provide some insight into current events".

https://www.ecampusnews.com/entry/why-accreditation-is-such-a-mess/