Unveiling the Interests of Stakeholders in Institutional Accreditation

Abstract

Higher education institutions engage in both programmatic and institutional accreditation in order to improve the quality of their instruction, but there are many other drivers including enhancing their reputation and complying with government requirements or requests. In 2022, the government of Qatar established the National Committee for Qualifications and Academic Accreditation. As part of its mandate, the committee developed a set of accreditation standards that included one dedicated to meeting the expectations of stakeholders and making an impact. We argue that having this distinct standard helps institutions orient themselves to what they need to do to fulfil their missions while focusing on serving their stakeholders. The approach to institutional accreditation presented in this paper incorporates the cause-and-effect concept that is structured into the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model. Although we do not attempt to empirically investigate this approach in this paper, we believe it contributes to the literature related to modelling stakeholders’ needs and expectations in order to enhance the value of accreditation. In addition, this paper presents some of the relationships that exist between an institution and its stakeholders, as well as some suggestions for how institutions may consider becoming compliant with this new standard.