Universities are entering a brave new world when they set up collaborative degree or academic programs overseas, and they must be vigilant in ensuring proper academic standards. That was the message accreditors were delivering at a conference here of senior international officers—along with a reminder that the accrediting organizations are watching.
“These are uncharted waters,” said Richard Osborn, a vice president of the Western Association of Colleges and Schools, one of the six regional accrediting agencies. Wielding copies of news articles about recent missteps colleges have taken in international partnerships, Mr. Osborn cautioned, “You get tainted with the brush of these programs being questionable.”
He spoke on Tuesday at the annual conference of the Association of International Education Administrators, which has drawn around 900 attendees from 47 countries for a three-day meeting that concludes on Wednesday.
Problems with programs overseas can put colleges’ accreditation back in the United States in jeopardy, Mr. Osborn and Marsal Stoll, his counterpart from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, said during Tuesday’s session.
Reviewing American colleges’ activities overseas has not been a major focus of regional accreditors in the past, but Mr. Osborn said his agency is paying more attention and recently approved new rules that tighten how credits can be awarded in dual-degree programs, limiting the number of credits in upper-level courses that can be counted toward both degrees.
As a result, a major Chinese-American dual-degree program, which has dozens of participating Chinese and American institutions, is out of compliance and could lose accreditation, he said. (The accrediting agency is allowing a three-year grace period.)
Mr. Osborn and Ms. Stoll hastened to say that increased scrutiny from accreditors should not be read as opposition to colleges’ increasing international activities. “We’re not here to be barriers. We’re here to enforce integrity, quality,” Ms. Stoll said.
Ms. Stoll encouraged institutions that begin academic collaborations abroad to ask themselves a few key questions, such as which partner will vet course content and supervise students and faculty members, as well as how academic credit will be awarded. These are questions, she noted, that accreditors will be raising when they review international-degree programs and collaborations.
Ms. Stoll told the packed conference room about one real-life international joint-degree program that failed to win her agency’s accreditation.
Among its failings, she said, was that the U.S. college did not do sufficient evaluation of faculty credentials and allowed credits from the partner institution to count toward the degree without giving them proper review. The American supervisor was a staff member without real authority to implement policy.
Despite the overview, figuring out which programs must be reviewed by accrediting groups, and what joint activities are permissible, can seem more art than science, many in the audience said.
Ms. Stoll and Mr. Osborn were peppered with questions during a question-and-answer session, and participants lined up a half-dozen-deep after the end of the session with additional queries. One complication is that the differing American accreditors have varying standards of review.
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