gender differential paper IJCRB

ijcrb.webs.com
JUNE 2011
INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS VOL 3, NO 2
10. Concluding remarks
This paper has considered the whole issue of accreditation from a macro (power political) and a
micro (institutional/program) perspective. While an institution may be accredited, this does not
necessarily mean that its clients will immediately receive better service or that the quality of the
institution will be dramatically elevated. As one member of faculty put it: “While it is
understood that accreditation should correlate positively with quality assurance … it should be
also understood that the first (accreditation) doesn’t guarantee the last (quality assurance).”
Accrediting agencies cannot exercise any legal control over institutions or programs. A host of
variables can intervene from the point at which the institution was accredited, e.g., change in
staff, new management, reduced funding, change in government policy, etc. All these factors
can impact negatively on planned improvements, quality assurance, service delivery, and student
learning outcomes. In fact, Wilds (2008:3) goes further and asserts that:
Colleges and universities (seeking accreditation/re-accreditation)
rarely describe the process as having improved the quality of education
in their institution. Instead, the process is looked upon with
much anxiety; is described as time consuming, often bringing the
college to a halt for a period of years or so in accomplishing its
goals; and the institution may have produced a compliant certification
report that is of little value to it.
One interviewee used the analogy of a person obtaining his/her driving license. In order to
successfully pass the driving test, an individual will do all that is required according to
prescribed norms/regulations. However, once the individual has his/her driving license, there is
no guarantee that the person will always obey the rules of the road, especially if he/she had a
history of poor driving skills. The respondent also made the point that although
bodies/committees within the accredited institution maintain set procedures, i.e., regular
meetings, the level of commitment and input into these meetings may be considerably weaker
post accreditation. In other words the various roleplayers within the institution can simply go
through the motions once accreditation has been granted. Although the institution has to submit
an annual report, this document can conceal or omit many elements of this ‘laissez-faire’
attitude, if these in fact do exist.
The above comments are not designed to condemn accreditation. They serve rather to highlight
the plea that accreditation should be accompanied by a great deal of introspection and
circumspection especially with regard to the symbolic interactional dimension as elaborated on
earlier. It is approximately one and a half years since JCC was accredited. The short-term
benefits include a noticeable change in the physical infrastructure of the campus, the introduction
of e-learning, and the induction /training of JCC personnel to facilitate accreditation of other
colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The long-term benefits, that is, the maintenance of
quality education, financial aid opportunities, credit transfer, and continued success in the
workplace remain to be seen. The last words must go to a member of faculty who worked
tirelessly throughout the whole process: “Getting accreditation is not the end of the journey;
however, it is the beginning of a long (process of) self-commitment.”
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