Regulatory and Accreditation in an Educational System

Regulatory/Accreditation

In an educational system of any country or state, there is a recognized regulatory board and varied accrediting bodies which are tasked to ensure that the goals of the educational institutions are uphold properly and that both the students and the educational facilitators continuously have a mutually beneficial relationship.

The State of California, in the U.S., has established one regulatory body - in the name of "Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE), as initiated by the Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education Reform Act," and is tasked to regulate and strengthen the State's "privately operated educational institutions (Commission Report, 2004).

The BPPVE regulates and licenses approximately 3,000 institutions, including 300 private postsecondary degree-granting institutions. Several categories of institutions are exempt, including: (1) institutions accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), (2) religious institutions whose degrees pertain to their religious beliefs, and (3) institutions that comply with very specific criteria and are approved by an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Degree-granting institutions accredited by the five regional accrediting agencies other than WASC are exempt from programmatic and institutional review and approval but are subject to all other regulatory and oversight provisions of the Reform Act."(Commission Report, 2004)

Regulation, as the term implies, standardized the education system. This is the very reason why there are different courses when taken should be followed by a state licensing exam. Some courses which require licensing are nursing, teachers, engineering, accounting, architecture, medicine, and law among others. Anyone who would graduate from any of these courses will not be considered as 'professional' and/or 'licensed to practice' unless they have taken and passed the licensure exam. Thus, the very goal of licensure or the regulatory body is to ensure that anyone who took these important courses are indeed capable, skilled and know the all the pertinent information for them to practice effectively as professionals.

The accrediting body, on the other hand, is tasked to ensure that the qualifications of a certain person or student is at par with the required qualifications, skills or knowledge of a certain university of the state. One of the regional accrediting bodies in the United States is the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). It should be noted that a recognized accrediting agency such as WASC ensures that the institution they will accredit will pass on the required quality in "10 specific areas" of an educational system, however these accrediting agencies are not compelled to "review or scrutinize every area in detail, nor are the institutions generally held to specific requirements" (Commission Report, 2004).

Every recognized accrediting agency is expected to demonstrate that it has standards for accreditation and pre-accreditation that are sufficiently rigorous to ensure that the agency is a reliable authority regarding evaluation of the quality of the education or training provided by the institutions or programs it accredits. The standards, set by the U.S. Secretary of Education, must effectively address the quality of the institution or program in ten areas." (Commission Report, 2004)

Hence, the very goal of the accrediting bodies is to guarantee that every schools or educational facilities within the state or the country offers quality education and learning system that passed the standards sets by the Department of Education. Needless to say, those students from a non-U.S. country will have to be assessed first if the subjects taken and the schools they attended before are aligned with the standards of the schools in the U.S. before they can ask to accredit their courses, subjects or grades taken.