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Research On The System Of Regional Institutional Accreditation Of The United States Of America

Posted on:2006-02-13Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:W Q HuangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2167360152991506Subject:Higher Education
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Accreditation is a distinctive and effective higher education quality assurance means in U.S.A.. It has played a very important role to the growing at a sustained, fast and sound manner of U.S.A.'s higher education in the 20th century. As the trend of generalization, diversification and internationalization of Chinese higher education becoming more and more obvious, one comprehensive and effective set of higher education quality assurance system that can be recognized by the international community should be set up as quickly as possible. In this respect, it becomes more significant for us to understand American institutional accreditation and learn something useful and beneficial from it when we are building and improving our own higher education system of quality and assurance.Based upon the foundation laid by previous research, this dissertation aims to investigate comprehensively and deeply the history, standards, procedures, policies as well as the trend of American institutional accreditation and to analyze its' nature, characteristics, functions, deficiency and the challenges it's facing from the respect of its vertical evolvement and horizontal comparison . This dissertation expect to summarize several pairs of beneficial experience for our country tentatively from the research and to put forward some apropos and feasible suggestions for the establishment and improvement of Chinese higher education quality assurance system.The Introduction explains the basic conceptions, the purposes and the methodology of the study, summarizes the literature presently at hand and set up a framework of the thesis.The main body is consisted of 6 chapters. Chapter One briefly describes the historical evolvement of institutional accreditation, analyzes its' nature, goal, functions, organization, management as well as the challenges it's facing. In this chapter, institutional accreditation is considered as a kind of higher education quality assurance activity used by the higher education community for self-regulation.In Chapter Two, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and secondary Schools is chosen to investigate particularly the historical evolvement the standards of institutional accreditation. The characteristics of theongoing accreditation standards are analyzed. At the end of this chapter, the important trend of institutional accreditation, such as "emphasizing the institutional performance and the outcomes of student learning", is also introduced clearly.Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 deal with a case study of the Middle State Commission of Higher Education. The chapters illustrate the overview of the ongoing procedures and policies of institutional accreditation and analyzed their characteristics, functions and deficiency.Chapter 5 briefly addresses the newest trend and issue of American institutional accreditation, including: the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2003-2004, the rise and development of accreditation of distance learning in higher education, and the globalization of American higher education accreditation. What's more, these trends are analyzed specially from the perspective of Chinese higher education.In chapter 6, the necessity, the feasibility and some possible and important steps to develop Chinese institutional accreditation system are discussed clearly, all aiming to help strengthening Chinese higher education quality assurance system.
Keywords/Search Tags:the United States, institutional accreditation, accreditation standards, accreditation procedures, accreditation policies, recognition, CHEA
PDF Full Text Request
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