Accreditation in Higher Education free essay sample

Accreditation is one of the most complex and confusing issues in higher education. It is also one of the most misused concepts – both intentionally and unintentionally. In its simplest sense, accreditation means validation – a statement by a group of persons who are at least theoretically impartial experts in higher education that a given school or department within a school has been thoroughly investigated and found to be worthy of approval. The process of accreditation is however a voluntary process which means that no school is required to be accredited. Also accreditation is not a government process as the accrediting agencies are, at least in United States, private agencies and are independent organizations. As mentioned, this is a peculiarly American process. In every other country in the world, the government either operates the colleges and universities or directly gives them the right to grant degrees, so an independent agency does not need to say that a given school is okay. We will write a custom essay sample on Accreditation in Higher Education or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Coming back to United States, there are hundreds of accrediting agencies, some of which are generally recognized as legitimate while others are not. Also as mentioned earlier there is no need for a school to be accredited. In fact there are a small number of acceptable schools and sometimes departments within schools that are not accredited either by their own choice (since accreditation is a voluntary and often expensive procedure) or because they are too new (all schools were unaccredited at one time) or too experimental (some would say too innovative) for the generally conservative accreditors. On the other hand, there are also a few less-than-wonderful schools that are legitimately accredited, though it is extremely rare. A much common scenario is where many bad schools claim to be accredited – but such accreditation is always by unrecognized, sometimes nonexistent, accrediting associations, often of their own creation.Accreditation is a controversial topic in higher education. In fact the last two US secretaries of education stated in no uncertain terms that the accrediting agencies are not doing their jobs, especially with respect to nontraditional schools such as some of the distance-learning agencies. As will also be discussed in the later sections of this report, having accreditation is not the same thing as being licensed, chartered, approved, authorized or recognized.Introduction to AccreditationAccreditation is a process of external quality review used by higher education to scrutinize colleges, universities, and higher education programs for quality assuran ce and quality improvement (Forest, Kinser, p. 29). It is basically a process by which a program or institution is recognized as being in conformity with some formal written agreed upon standard. Another definition of accreditation is â€Å"a process by which an institution of postsecondary education evaluates its educational activities, in who or in part, and seeks and independent judgment to confirm that it is substantially achieving its objectives and is generally equal in quality to comparable institutions of post secondary education† (Bogue, Hall, 2003, p. 22).According to American Psychological Association APA, the accreditation process of is â€Å"a process that involves judging the degree to which a program has achieved the goals and objectives†. The Oxford English Dictionary defines accreditation as â€Å"the act or process of giving official authorization†. It is noteworthy that the definitions do not refer the level of performance of an individual or an organization. It ironically means that, accredita tion could be applied to an organization whose level of performance is inadequate. Although every state and nation accredits schools and professional programs and publishes lists of approved, certified, recognized or registered institutions, the term accreditation more frequently refers to approval association and accrediting agencies rather than to state approval (Williams cited in Drake, 2003, p. 64).The accreditation process is one in which, according to Council for Higher Education Accreditation CHEA,   ccreditation is â€Å"the faculty, administrators, and staff of the institution or academic program conduct a self-study using the accrediting association’s set of expectations about quality as their guide. A team of peers (from within the higher education system that are) selected by the accrediting association reviews the evidence, visits the campus to interview faculty and staff, and writes a report of its assessment† (Asher, 2000, p. 254).An institution or program seeking accreditation must go through a number of steps stipulated by an accred iting organization. These steps involve a combination of preparation of evidence of accomplishment by the institution or program, scrutiny of these materials by faculty and administrative peers, action to determine the accreditation status by the accrediting organizations. Of the several beneficial purposes of accreditation, the two considered to be most fundamental are to ensure the quality and to assist in the improvement of the institution or program. Specifically, the accreditation of an institution or program says to the public in general and to institutional constituencies in particular that is has appropriate mission and purposes, resources necessary to achieve those purposes, and a history and record implying that it will continue to achieve, and a history and record implying that it will continue to achieve its purposes. The needs of several constituencies are served when accreditation fulfills its purposes of quality assurance and institutional or program improvement. The general public is served by being assured that the institution or program has been evaluated internally and externally and conforms to general expectations in higher education.Accreditation benefits students in several wyas. It assures them that an accredited institution has been found to be satisfactory and capable of meeting their needs, facilitates the transfer of credits among institutions, promotes admission to graduate degree programs and serves as a prerequisite, in some cases for entering professions. Institutions also benefit from accreditation. There is first the stimulus for periodic self-evaluation and continuous improvement. Accreditation enables institutions to gain eligibility for themselves and their students in certain programs of governments and private aid to higher education and helps institutions to prevent parochialism by setting expectations that are national in scope. Yet another benefit is the enhanced reputation of an accredited institution, primarily because of the generally high public regard for accreditation (Bogue, Hall, 2003, p. 23).Accreditation of institutions and programs is ongoing: Initial accreditation is not a guarantee of indefinite accredited status. Periodic review is a fact of life for accredited institutions and programs. Self-accreditation is not an option (Forest, Kinser, 2002, p. 30). The public benefits when it can be assured that the accredited institution is ongoing and explicit activities deemed adequate to enable the institution to improve itself continuously and to made necessary modifications to accommodate changes in knowledge and practice in various fields of study. Accreditation decreases the need for intervention by regulatory agencies because institutions are themselves required to provide for the maintenance of quality (Bogue, Hall, 2003, p. 23).Accreditation is based on the evaluation of institutional or program performance against a set of minimal standards. There may be, therefore an understandable variation among accredited institutions. However, without accreditation, the degree of variation would be much greater, and the public’s ability to discern the differences between the institutions of adequate quality and those of inadequate quality would be seriously damaged. Without accreditation, the vagaries of reputational studies also would be greatly exacerbated (Bogue, Hall, 2003, p. 23-24).Usually accreditation and quality assurance in various countries is typically carried out by the government. An exception to this case is United States, where accreditation is carried out by private in-profit organizations designed for this specific purpose. External quality review of higher quality education is a non-governmental exercise in United States.The word accreditation is often and incorrectly used interchangeably with certification and licensure. Whereas accreditation is a status ascribed to an institution or one of its parts, certification usually applies to an individual or connotes a process that determines that he or she has fulfilled requirements set forth in a particular line of work and may practice in that field of work (Bogue, hall, 2003, p. 22). Licensure is also a term applicable to an individual rather than an institution. Often related and sometime slinked to both accreditation and certification, licensure is the process by which an individual is granted the authority to practice in a particular field. It runs the gamut from vehicle operation to brain surgery, from barbering to flying jumbo jets.Generally Accepted Accreditation PrinciplesGAAP is basically an accounting concept i.e. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. These principles are generally accepted: not absolutely, not always, not universally, but generally. The same concept makes as much sense in the world of accreditation: GAAP – Generally Accepted Accreditation Principles. The term was first used informally at the national convention of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers AACRAO in Reno.In United States, the relevant key decision makers – especially university registrars, admissions officers, corporate human resource officers, and governmental agencies are in near-unanimous agreement. Not everyone calls the concept of GAAP, but the idea is the same: is a school meets certain criteria, its credits or degrees will probably be accepted; if not, they probably won’t be. Following are criteria for GAAP in some countries (Bear, Bear, 2003, p. 15):Ø   For schools based in the United States: accreditation by an accrediting agency recognized by the US Department of Education and/or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation CHEA. Ø   For schools in Great Britain and the British Commonwealth: membership in the Association of Commonwealth Universities and a listing in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook.Ø   For schools in Australia: recognition by the Australian Qualification Framework.Ø   For schools in other countries: a description in the World Education Series (published by Projects in International Education Research PIER, a joint venture of AACRAO and NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, with the participation of the College Board); or a listing in the Countries Series, published by the Australian National Office for Overseas Skills Recognition, NOOSR.Goals and objectives of accreditationAccreditation has the following five key features according to Forest and Kinser (2002, p.2002, p. 30-31):Self-study: Institutions and programs prepare a written summary of performance based on accrediting organizations’ standardsPeer review: Accreditation review is conducted by facu lty and administrative peers in the profession. These colleagues review the self-study and serve on visiting teams that review institutions and programs after the self-study is accomplished. Peers make up the majority of members of the accrediting commissions of the accrediting commissions or boards that make judgments about accrediting status.Site visit: Accrediting organizations normally send a visiting team to review an institution or program. The self-study provides he foundations of the team visit. In addition to the peers described above, teams may include public members i.e. non-academics who have an interest in higher education. All team members are volunteers and are generally not compensated. Action or judgment by the accrediting organization: Accrediting organizations have commissions that affirm accreditation for new institutions and programs, reaffirm accreditation for ongoing institutions and programs, and deny accreditation to institutions and programs.Ongoing external review: Institutions and programs continue to be reviewed periodically on cycles that range from a few years to as much as ten years long. They normally prepare a self-study and undergo a site visit each time.From the stand point of institutional governance, the accreditation process segmented responsibility. It has been criticized for emphasizing the interests of certain programs; for reinforcing the status quo by limiting deviation from conventional practice; for effectually requiring governing boards to spend funds for building, equipment, and staff when it specified faculty-student rations and minimum square footage program operation; and for having standards that tend to be quantitative rather tha n qualitative.However, the accreditation process has been higher education’s way of managing itself in the absence of the national ministry of education found in most other nations. And in peculiarly American fashion the federal agency most responsible for education accredited the accrediting groups; thus far and no further (Cohen, 1998, p. 250).

How to Return Multiple Values From a Delphi Function

How to Return Multiple Values From a Delphi Function A most common construct in a Delphi application would be a procedure or a function. Known as routines, procedures or functions are statement blocks you call from different locations in a program. Simply put a procedure is a routine not returning a value while a function returns a value. A return value from a function is defined by the return type. In most cases you would write a function to return a single value that would be an integer, string, boolean or some other simple type, also return types could be an array, a string list, an instance of a custom object or alike. Note that even if your function returns a string list (a collection of strings) it still returns a single value: one instance of the string list. Further, Delphi routines can really have many faces: Routine, Method, Method Pointer, Event Delegate, Anonymous method... Can a Function Return Multiple Values? The first answer that comes to mind is no, simply because when we think of a function, we think of a single return value. Certainly, the answer to the above question is, however, yes. A function can return several values. Lets see how. Var Parameters How many values can the following function return, one or two? function PositiveReciprocal(const valueIn : integer; var valueOut : real): boolean; The function obviously returns a boolean value (true or false). How about the second parameter valueOut declared as a VAR (variable) parameter? Var parameters are passed to the function by reference meaning that if the function changes the value of the parameter- a variable in the calling block of code- the function will change the value of the variable used for the parameter. To see how the above works, heres the implementation: function PositiveReciprocal(const valueIn: integer; var valueOut: real): boolean;begin result : valueIn 0; if result then valueOut : 1 / valueIn;end; The valueIn is passed as a constant parameter- function cannot alter it, and it is treated as read-only. If valueIn or greater than zero, the valueOut parameter is assigned the reciprocal value of valueIn and the result of the function is true. If valueIn is 0 then the function returns false and valueOut is not altered in any way. Heres the usage: var b : boolean; r : real;begin r : 5; b : PositiveReciprocal(1, r); //here: // b true (since 1 0) // r 0.2 (1/5) r : 5; b : PositiveReciprocal(-1, r); //here: // b false (since -1 end; Therefore, the PositiveReciprocal actually can return 2 values! Using var parameters you can have a routine return more than one value. Out Parameters Theres another way to specify a by-reference parameter- using the out keyword, as in: function PositiveReciprocalOut(const valueIn: integer; out valueOut: real): boolean;begin result : valueIn 0; if result then valueOut : 1 / valueIn;end; The implementation of PositiveReciprocalOut is the same as in PositiveReciprocal, theres only one difference: the valueOut is an OUT parameter. With parameters declared as out, the initial value of the referenced variable valueOut is discarded. Heres the usage and the results: var b : boolean; r : real;begin r : 5; b : PositiveReciprocalOut(1, r); //here: // b true (since 1 0) // r 0.2 (1/5) r : 5; b : PositiveReciprocalOut(-1, r); //here: // b false (since -1 end; Note how in the second call the value of the local variable r is set to 0. The value of r was set to 5 before the function call but since the parameter in declared as out, when r reached the function the value was discarded and the default empty value was set for the parameter (0 for real type). As a result, you can safely send uninitialized variables for out parameters- something that you should not do with var parameters. Parameters are used to send something to the routine, except here with out parameters :), and therefore uninitialized variables (used for VAR parameters) could have weird values. Returning Records? The above implementations where a function would return more than one value are not nice. The function actually returns a single value, but also returns, better to say alters, the values of the var/out parameters. Because of this, you may very rarely want to use by-reference parameters. If more results from a function are required, you can have a function return a record type variable. Consider the following: type TLatitudeLongitude record Latitude: real; Longitude: real; end; and a hypothetical function: function WhereAmI(const townName : string) : TLatitudeLongitude; The function WhereAmI would return the Latitude and Longitude for a given town (city, area, ...). The implementation would be: function WhereAmI(const townName: string): TLatitudeLongitude;begin//use some service to locate townName, then assign function result: result.Latitude : 45.54; result.Longitude : 18.71;end; And here we have a function returning 2 real values. Ok, it does return 1 record, but this record has 2 fields. Note that you can have a very complex record mixing various types to be returned as a result of a function. Thats it. Therefore, yes, Delphi functions can return multiple values.

Risk Management and the Supply Chain Research Paper - 1

Risk Management and the Supply Chain - Research Paper Example This paper will focus discussing the way unknown-unknown risk has a negative impact to supply chain. Moreover, it will also explain the way investing in redundancy, increasing velocity in sensing and responding, and creating adaptive supply chain community can assist in mitigation of this form of risk. A significant aspect of unknown risk is consequences that cannot be predetermined; through they have adverse effects on supply chain of an organization. For example, earthquake is a type of unknown risk, which occurred in Japan on March 11 2010 leading to the devastation of infrastructures that supported supply chain in the country. In this case, this unknown risk interrupted the power systems, and destroyed infrastructures by dumping debris on roads, which interfered with the transport system (The Economist, 2009). Seemingly, this earthquake led to significant interruption of supply chain, which is associated by numerous Japanese companies. Evidently, there were interruptions caused by this disaster such as halting production in companies operating from the north and east of Japan; in fact, they were forced to evacuate. Therefore, these firms were subjected to this unknown risk since consequences such as closing the plant due to shock caused by the earthquake were not anticipated. On the companies affected by this disaster was Renesas, which is a manufacturer of microcontrollers, whereby they were subjected to this unknown risk that led to closure of six facilities. Damages resulting from this disaster have a negative impact on other components that support supply chain such as ports, railway lines, and roads. Therefore, goods are neither transported to local nor international markets. For instance, occurrence of the earth in Japan led to interference of operations in various organizations that are market based such as Sony, whose supply chain was significant affected. Apparently, the impact of this earthquake was also transmitted to