What are the common challenges and opportunities for regional accreditation in a global context?

It is surprising to me that there has not been more effect from globalization on higher education. Specifically, with the COVID pandemic, universities around the world turned to online courses. This gives them a perfect place to expand their offerings beyond their own countries, and serve students around the world, thus expanding their reach, and potentially gaining far greater revenue. But, to do this, accrediting bodies in different countries need to be supportive of this. Yet, as much as universities in the U.S. and other developed economies are still not taking full advantage of globalization, universities and governments in developing economies tend to have even less vision.

One of the biggest challenges of globalization is that local talent needs to compete with global talent. This means that US students are on the same playing field with students from China, India, Spain, etc. This global competition makes it even more urgent that educators & leaders prepare today’s students with a culturally attuned & growth mindset. So how can we build a global classroom without physically traveling all the time? Technology is one of our best answers to solve this puzzle. Through technology, we can all build a global classroom in our local space. It requires teachers to engage in continuing education, embody a growth mindset, and start to see themselves as facilitators of learning as opposed to owners of information.

I believe that we can turn some of the challenges into great opportunities. Instead of looking at technology as a means of communication information, we should look at it as a means of building a vibrant global learning community among students and teachers who share a common goal. This learning community will provide a platform for engaging in mutually enriched discussions, debates and sharing of local knowledge for common global challenges, just as an example. And much more!

Regional Accreditation is a reflection of the educational institutions they accredit. So the same challenges that are faced by educational institutions will be reflected in accreditation. For instance, online classes have a de-facto standard of being conducted primarily through forums. Yet the grading methods usually discourage long-term conversations that could build true value. But these are still accredited. Further, regional accreditation can be hindered by U.S. policies. While the government fights "culture wars" the nuts and bolts of things like the definition of "correspondence" education as currently written can very well include most MOOCs, which could have negative consequences to, if the regulations are enforced.

With the world being interconnected, we need to not sit on our laurels in the U.S. Since every country is recognized to have its own form of accreditation, there will likely be competition at some point for which accrediting body an educational institution should choose to go through. While it would be difficult to dethrone regional accreditation, it isn't impossible. Remember that at one time Japanese cars were considered of lower quality than U.S. ones, and by having true continual improvement, they came to be viewed as the highest quality cars on the market. The same can happen in the realm of accreditation.

With regional accreditation still being considered the gold standard for educational institutional quality, there is an opportunity to provide accreditation to educational institutions throughout the world. I know that WASC ACS has done this, and I suspect other regional accreditors are doing so as well.