Quality Improvement Alive and Vital in US Accreditation

The US prizes heterogeneous institutions responding creatively to the diverse needs of American society and economy. No assurance system that measures every institution against one quality standard will support this goal. In a higher education market where institutions struggle for advantage, the largest US accreditor has implemented an alternative accrediting process (AQIP) that helps an institution incorporate quality improvement principles and strive toward self-chosen improvement targets to strengthen its competitive position. Fundamentally different from traditional quality assurance, which uses sporadic inspections to judge institutions against fixed standards, AQIP uses institutions ’ ongoing documentation of quality improvement to provide public quality assurance