Accreditation

Introduction: interest in evaluating the improvements resulting from external evaluation processes in higher education has revealed that there is a lack of objective instruments available for this purpose. Consequently, this study presents the design and validation of an instrument for evaluating the improvement effect of the accreditation system of Spanish university degrees. Methodology: a 108-item questionnaire was prepared and was applied to a sample of 1964 subjects from different university groups (students, teachers, management, etc.). Its reliability and construct validity were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Results: analysis of the instrument’s technical characteristics showed high reliability, both overall and at the dimensional level, with Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω being greater than .95. The EFA identified eight factors that contained the 105 items finally included, explaining 77.37% of the variance in Discussion and conclusions: these results all indicate that the instrument designed is reliable and valid, with a solid multidimensional structure that makes it possible to evaluate the impact of the accreditation system on various aspects of Spanish university degrees.

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Please, cite this article as follows: García-Domingo, B., Rodríguez-Mantilla, J. M., & Martínez-Zarzuelo, A. (2023). Instrumento para valorar el impacto del sistema de acreditación en educación superior: validación mediante análisis factorial exploratorio [An instrument to evaluate the impact of the higher education accreditation system: Validation through exploratory factor analysis]. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 81 (286), 555-578. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP81-3-2023-06

The article defines three institutional evaluation models (English, French and Dutch one) and revises some of the experiences in institutional evaluation fron Europe and Latin America trying to extract points in common as well as between them. We could say that, mostly, the projects of institutional evaluation plan at universities emerge promoted by universities themselves and are pushed by goverments inside the context of institutional improvements.

Most of the governments put the control that implies the accreditation of universities to give the correspondent degrees. In generat terms, we could say that, the academic institutions put the stress improvements while the governments do the same with the control or accreditation of them. This is largely explained in the National Plan for Universities Quality Evaluation in progress at the time being in Spain and some ideas being considered for a better implantation of the plan.

The institutional evaluation is a subject of fundamental importance for the higher education institutions, facing the raising interest by the society in the efficiency and quality of the activities developed by the Universities. This article focus on the necessity that higher education institutions, make clear its own goals when starts the institutional evaluation process. The reflections about experiences of others are very important to help the own planning processes, but local, regional and national characteristics must be taken in account.

This article examines the evaluation procedures of postgraduate programs in a number of different countries with different political, social and economic characteristics.

Four sections discuss the main goals pursued and the most frequent evaluation methodologies that have been found through the review of several researches whose main aim is to assess university postgraduate programs offered at U.S.A., Latinoamerican countries, Europe and, especially in Spain. Strengths and weaknesses of these evaluation systems are provided, and also when these procedures were initiated. We pay a careful separate attention to practice-oriented master programs because of their differences from traditional masters and doctoral programs.

 

Key words: Postgraduate Programs, Master Programs, Program Evaluation, Accreditation, Evaluation Methodologies.