[4] A criticism of higher education accreditation is the over-reliance on input factors, such as instructional time, adequate facilities and credentialed faculty, compared to learning outcomes.
[5] In Albania, the accreditation authority/national recognition body is the ASCAL – Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education (Albanian: Agjencia e Sigurimit të Cilësisë në Arsimin e Lartë) which was established by Order of CM no.
[11] The German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) was founded on September 5, 1957, and conducts institutional accreditation of private and religious universities since 2001.
It is the government supervisory and coordinating agency of the quality assurance framework applied in Hellenic Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
Without accreditation, "It is emphasized that these fake institutions have no legal entity to call themselves as University/Vishwvidyalaya and to award 'degrees' which are not treated as valid for academic/employment purposes.
Thus, any institution which has not been created by an enactment of Parliament or a State Legislature or has not been granted the status of a Deemed-to-be-University, is not entitled to award a degree.
[19] In 2012, Seattle Times wrote about "Poorly regulated, unaccredited and often entirely fake colleges have sprung up" around India in response to "demand for higher education accelerates, driven by rising aspirations and a bulging population of young people.
[21][22] Universities in Ireland are self-regulating and accredit their own courses;[22] they were established by the state (by royal charter or primary legislation) as were many other publicly funded higher education providers, such as the institutes of technology (ITs).
[25] The NFQ also recognises many foreign accreditation bodies, such as the UK's NCFE and City and Guilds of London Institute.
The council acts as a reviewer of the activity of the academic centers in Israel and sets terms and requirements for every degree given.
It involves two separate but correlated programs that were instituted at the same time: First, each University went through a four-step process to adopt and approve its own Regolamenti Didattici di Ateneo (RDA).
[31] In 2004, following a long postwar period of independent quality assurance of select member institutions by the JUAA,[32] the Japanese government via the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology began to certify third party bodies as quality assurance agencies for Japanese degrees.
The commission also serves as the monitoring and evaluation body to ensure compliance towards quality of education offered by institutions under charter.
[34] Accreditation was done by the Lembaga Akreditasi Negara (National Accreditation Board), a statutory body created through an act of Parliament, for certificates, diplomas and degree courses provided by private higher educational institutions (defined as institutions providing tertiary or post-secondary education) until 2007 when the body was replaced with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).
Prior to the enactment of the legislations that provided for the establishment of these bodies, no specific framework for accreditation existed and institutions only required a valid registration status from the Ministry of Education of Malaysia.
Within the Bologna process a state agency was set up by the Portuguese Government to offer central and regulated accreditation.
Previously, Portugal had used a system of professional accreditation and degree recognition by sector, with a number of associations, Unions and Professional Orders (Ordens Profissionais): the Ordem dos Médicos (for medical doctors), the Ordem dos Engenheiros (for engineers) and the Portuguese Bar Association (for lawyers).
In addition, the state through the ministry for higher education, has usually been the central highest accreditation entity and thus it is illegal to award degrees without government approval.
This dubious situation changed in the mid-2000s with the deep reorganization imposed by the Bologna process implementation in Portugal, the creation of the new central state-managed Accreditation Agency and the foundation of many regulated new Ordens covering dozens of professions until then unregulated by this type of professional organization.
[37][failed verification] In Russia accreditation/national recognition is directly overseen by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation.
The Russian Federation has a three-step recognition system:[citation needed] There exist additional agencies, such as the Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development (AKKORK), which conducts independent assessment of quality assurance of higher education institutions.
AKKORK is an independent professional agency in the field of consultancy, conduct of the reviews, accreditation and certification of education institutions.
[40] NAA is recognized as the organisation in Russia responsible for dissemination of knowledge and information on procedures of the state accreditation of HEIs.
The first level of accreditation allowed for the training of junior specialists and included technical schools and colleges offering basic higher education.
The third level of accreditation made it possible to train specialists and masters, and assumed the presence of a developed material and technical base and qualified teaching staff.
[45] Prosecutions under the Education Reform Act are rare, as many unaccredited awarding bodies are based outside UK jurisdiction.
In 2004, Thames Valley College in London was prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 for offering degrees from the 'University of North America', a limited liability company set up by themselves in the US with no academic staff and no premises other than a mail forwarding service.
[50][51] However, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity is involved in certifying accrediting agencies, as it applies to the issue of higher education institutions' qualifications to disburse federal financial aid to their students and their students' ability to qualify for federal financial aid.