The issue of quality assurance and accreditation in higher education at the Arab international level international level

In the late nineties, concerns about quality assurance and accreditation first arose in some Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirates (Al-Baker, 2001)(Makroom, 1996).

With regard to these countries, it can be said that some quality assurance and accreditation systems are in place, and some are under construction. This is indicated by a UNESCO report (Khahlel, 2011), which classifies the Arab countries in this field as follows:

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1. The actual application stage: Jordan is the only Arab state that exceeded the preparation stage of accreditation procedures and criteria in higher education to the stage of an actual application.

2. The application stage: Arab countries that have begun the application stage include:

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Palestine, and Lebanon.

3. This section is for the Arab countries that have not started the application stage, which includes the rest of the Arab countries that have not been mentioned before.

Today, throughout the entire Arab region external quality assurance systems are based on common methods adopted from Europe, the United Kingdom, or the United States. As higher education has become more international (e.g., joint degrees, student exchanges, open and distance learning, overseas campuses), it has become increasingly important to work together internationally in terms of quality assurance.

At the international level of Arab states, the issue of quality assurance and accreditation in higher education appeared first during the UNESCO Arab Regional Conference on Higher Education, which was held in 1998 in Beirut, Lebanon. The conference shed light on this issue, as one of the main principle reforms that should occur in Arab higher education sectors. It stressed the need for creating quality assurance procedures for Higher Education in each country, meeting the national needs, and keeping in line with the orientation at the global as well as the regional level (Arab Regional Conference on Higher Education, Beirut, 1998).

In 1999 in Riyadh, quality assurance in higher education was a focus of the Association of Arab Universities’ attention at the Seventh Conference of Higher Education Ministries in Arab Countries. This association was an initiative that was launched by The Cultural Department of the League of Arab States³ in 1964 for establishing an organization aimed at supporting and coordinating the work of Arab universities. Twenty-six Saudi universities are members in this association (www. aaru.ju.edu.jo). The concerns about quality in Arab higher education in this conference was a result of the major developments and transformation processes in the Arab

3The League of Arab States is a regional organization for Arab countries from North Africa and Asia. It was founded in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Now the League includes 22 country members.

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region which included the expansion of universities, the increasing number of students (massification), the demand of the private sector to invest in higher education (privatization), and the emergence of new kinds of education such as distance education (diversification). The Association of Arab Universities felt the urgent need to control the quality of higher education in order to ensure its efficiency under these new transformation processes, globalization, and open markets. It saw the necessity of adopting self-assessment and external evaluation procedures in the Arab universities. These procedures ensure their efficiency and credibility and enable them to carry out their mission in education, scientific research, and community service.

They also support their competitive place among universities at the global level and achieve the confidence of the community and other educational institutions.

For these goals the General Secretariat of the Association of Arab Universities prepared a project that was approved by the League of Arab States in 1999. In 2001, that was followed by the establishment of an office in the General Secretariat of the Association of Arab Universities to coordinate the evaluation and accreditation procedures of the Arab universities and their programs. A group of experts in higher education systems was selected as a committee for this office. In 2003, this committee launched its first handbook of self-assessment and external evaluation of Arab universities, which was circulated to the Arab universities members of the association.

Quality assurance in higher education has continued as a critical topic in the conferences of higher education ministries in Arab countries in throughout 2003-/2005 and 2006/2008. At the time of the conference in 2003, there was an increasing need for an independent Arab body concerned with ensuring the quality of higher education and excellence of its outputs, which had become clear in view of the development of the concept of quality and accreditation and gaining increasing interest on the Arab and global level.

The General Secretariat of the Association prepared the project for establishing the Council of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in 2007 as an independent nonprofit organization. This council aims to improve the quality of higher education in the Arab world by providing efforts related to quality assurance and accreditation, in order to improve efficiency of education, capacity-building for quality assurance and accreditation procedures, exchange of

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experiences, and awareness about quality in the Arab region. The council launched five handbooks for quality assurance and accreditation in 2008, 2009, and 2013 for Arab universities to use in their adoption of these procedures. These handbooks are considered as a basic guide for evaluating and accrediting academic programs in Arab educational institutions. Their contents reflect the role of the Council of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in the Association in assisting those institutions, improving the quality and guaranteeing the academic skills. These guides contain information on the quality assurance of academic programs defined by the Quality Assurance and Accreditation Council, which sets a minimum for the expected standards of graduates, which were set in line with international standards, and at the same time in a manner that suits the Arab environment and its specificity. Moreover, since 2007 the council has held a number of workshops, seminars and conferences in the field of quality assurance and accreditation in order to spread the culture of quality and provide technical support in this area for member universities.

All these efforts over the past years have resulted in the adoption of quality assurance and accreditation procedures in ten Arab countries (Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Sudan, Oman, Palestine, Kuwait, Libya, and Egypt) by establishing national bodies for quality assurance and accreditation in their higher education sectors.

5.7 The issue of quality assurance and accreditation in higher education at the European and