With the objective of assuring continuous improvement in its academic performance, enhancing the positioning and marking a differentiation within the Chilean Higher Education setting, the UM initiated, by the beginning of 2005, an institutional accreditation process with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education of the U.S.A. (MSCHE).
The UM ended this process successfully. Indeed, the MSCHE, on June 24th of 2010, granted the institutional accreditation to the UM, status which extends for an only period of five years.
The heart of the process is the accomplishment of the 22 Eligibility Requirements and the 14 Higher Education Excellence Criteria (or Accreditation Standards). The criteria are focused on institutional and educational effectiveness, which is firstly evidenced through reaching the official status of Candidacy to Accreditation, granted in June of 2006, of which the onsite assessment, carried out by four experts, was led by Dr. Ruth Lugo, Dean of Education and Human Services of the Metropolitan College of New York.
The above was followed by proper responses given by the UM concerning quality modifications during the period 2006 – 2008, involving accountability reports and systematic verification visits, and the development of an extensive, thorough, collaborative and supervised Institutional Self-Study during the period 2008 – 2009, concluding with a fundamental assessment visit in April of 2010. This final assessment was carried out by nine North American experts, led by Dr. Edgar Roulhac, Vice-president of Academic Services of Johns Hopkins University.
The MSCHE is one of the oldest and most prestigious accreditation agencies in the world, recently acknowledged by the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) as being the only one in that country to fully meet the regulations of good working practices of an accreditation entity.
The MSCHE is one of the only six agencies which officially accredit Higher Education institutions in the U.S.A. Like this, it is acknowledged by the US Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, operating in the District of Columbia and in the states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico. It is the North American agency which has mostly extended its work outside the U.S.A., including universities in Canada, France, Grea Britain, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland. It has associated more than 530 institutions, among these are Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, Teachers College of Columbia, Pennsylvania State University, Albright College, State University of New York (System SUNY), US Naval Academy, Cornell University, and Georgetown University.
Having accomplished this “constitutes a differentiating quality seal within the Chilean Higher Education setting and a means which will facilitate International relations and UM faculty, student and professional mobility, essentially important in an increasingly globalized world”, states Dr. Moisés Silva, Director of Institutional Research and Quality Assurance and Executive Accreditation Liaison with the MSCHE.
This qualitative step taken by the UM is equally important for Chile, especially within the Higher Education system, since it breaks quality measurement self-reference, analogously to what has occurred in other areas of national work, showing the feasibility of contrasting with demanding standards.
The aforementioned fully agrees with what is established in the recent report (2009) on Tertiary Education in Chile of the Organization for Economic Development and Collaboration and the World Bank, regarding that the country must focus on aspects such as the accountability of institutions; reliability and dynamism of the quality assurances system; the importance of enhancing the internationalization of education, facilitating student and faculty mobility; and the significance that institutions accomplish an internationally comparable accreditation.
The UM has become member of a special “club”. Like this, it has a seat in the annual meetings of the MSCHE to discuss and establish quality assurance policies, enhancing relations with high prestigious universities; which becomes highly relevant considering that Chile has bet on a policy of strong globalization.
