Accreditation processes of university degrees from the perspective of the teachers

Abstract

All Higher Education qualifications must undergo evaluation and accreditation processes when they are designed, implemented and developed. University teachers are key actors in such processes, yet how much they know and what they think about evaluation and accreditation is still unknown. The aim of this study was to find out about how much teachers from five faculties from a state university know and how they feel about evaluation and accreditation of degrees, and to compare their opinions in terms of whether they had participated in such processes or had been members of the Quality Committee of their faculty or of a degree. This was a descriptive, mixed-methods study in which data were collected via a Likert scale and focus groups, which allowed collecting quantitative and qualitative data. The results showed that teachers know little about the structuring and development of evaluation and accreditation processes. Nevertheless, teachers seem to know more about evaluation and accreditation when they have actively participated in such processes or when they have been members of a Quality Committee, while those teachers how are employed part time seem to know less about evaluation and accreditation. Participants felt such that evaluation and accreditation are tedious, rigid, bureaucratic processes, that load teachers with extra, unacknowledged work. Evaluation and accreditation must be reviewed so that they are simplified, focus on teaching-learning, and training is given to parties involved in order to foster an evaluation spirit among teaching staff.