Degree Accreditation in Canada

Abstract

Until recently, the meaning and origin of the Canadian university degree was well understood by Canadians and around the world. Degrees were only offered by universities and the use of the label university was controlled by legislation in each of the ten provinces and three territories. Institutional membership in the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada signified that an institution was a university-level institution. However, the increased demand in the last two decades of the 20th century for access to university-level degrees has resulted in the provincial-level approval of degrees that are offered in non-university settings. As a result of the increased proliferation of these non-university delivered degrees, the provincial-level degree accreditation processes and the university-level degree granting standards, as represented in the membership criteria for AUCC, are no longer aligned. In this paper, the author traces the changes in degree granting in Canada over the past 15 years or so. Current provincial policies and recent decisions regarding degree granting are outlined. The author suggests a number of implications of the current degree accreditation process in Canada, including the emergence of a new kind of tiering of Canadian undergraduate degrees where different degree accreditation processes have led to different degrees with different meaning and value to the student. In order to protect both the student consumer and the currency of the Canadian undergraduate degree, the author recommends the development of national standards to define both a university-level institution and the quality of the degree it delivers.