JEDDAH: The National Commission for Academic Accreditation & Assessment (NCAAA) has issued 11 standards to receive accreditation for universities and other institutes of higher education in the Kingdom.
“These standards aim at achieving a higher quality for universities and the study programs offered by them. These criteria also insist on transparency and candidness in all academic, administrative and research activities of a university. So, universities who intend to receive accreditation will have to supply accurate and documented information to students and job providers. Such information assures those who are concerned with the scope of various study programs that a university’s program matches with the published objectives of that program,” Secretary General of NCAAA Abdullah Al-Musallami said in a statement.
NCAAA is the authority to guarantee academic quality and accreditation at post metric levels in institutes of higher learning except in military education. It is also responsible for ensuring the transparency of the procedures at colleges and universities.
The standards aim at keeping the level of the higher education in the Kingdom on a par with the high academic performance in advanced countries on the one hand, and catering for the needs of a developing society in various specializations and making the Kingdom a hub for science and technology education under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education, a local daily reported on Saturday.
“NCAAA works in collaboration with educational and training institutions on programs that would contribute effectively to increase quality above the secondary level. It also seeks to be known inside the Kingdom and abroad as a credible professional institution,” Al-Musallami said.
NCAAA awards two kinds of accreditations - institutional accreditation and the program accreditation.
The 11 criteria are comprehensive covering administrative, academic, service, tools and utility aspects of an institution. The standards include the setting up of an external assessment team of experts to study an institution’s reports regarding its own performance. The team will also visit the institution to see if it is actually following all the quality requirements.
Then the NCAAA will submit the report of the team to the accreditation committee, which comprises a number of international experts who are experienced in assessment and evaluation and the local experts who are working in universities. This committee will study the team’s report on the basis of an independent report prepared by the NCAAA and make appropriate recommendations on accreditation.
Al-Musallami said last year eight universities and private colleges were granted the accreditations applied for institutional and program accreditations, while a total of 11 institutions had applied. The following are the institutions that received organizational accreditation: King Saud University, King Fahd Petroleum & Minerals, Prince Sultan, Effat, College of Public Administration in Jeddah, Dar Al-Hekma College, Riyadh Colleges of Dental Medicine & Pharmacology and Riyadh Community College. They also received accreditations for many of their study programs, he said.
NCAAA issues 11 new academic standards
