The US accreditation system and the CRE’s quality audits ‐ a comparative study

Abstract

Presents a comparative study of the US accreditation system and of the CRE’s (European Association of Universities) quality audits. After an examination of the published literature on recent developments of the systems their strong and weak points are discussed. This is followed by a very detailed analysis of the procedures for both systems and based, on the personal experience of the author, it is recommended that the responsibility of creating the necessary mechanisms for quality assessment and quality improvement should lie with each and every institution, while outside independent agencies, such as the already existing six US regional accrediting associations, should assume the role of meta‐evaluating or auditing.