A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya

90

July 2018

Royal Decree 420/2015, 29 May, on the establishment, recognition, authorization and accreditation of universities and faculties introduced the institutional accreditation of faculties at both public and private higher education institutions as an alternative model for the accreditation of recognised programmes governed by Royal Decree 1393/2007.

Pursuant to this new legislation, on 13 March 2018, the Secretary General for Universities Resolution of 7 March was finally published, which sets out the instructions for the applications procedure of the new “institutional accreditation” of public and private HE institutions, together with all of the benefits of institutional accreditation. I do not wish to go into the benefits here, which are a matter of public knowledge, but would rather share a general thought related to the subject at hand.

After eleven years of formalising and building an authentic new European higher education area, which places the focus on the transparency and accountability to society of the European university system, the transferability and recognition between countries of skills-based higher education learning outcomes, and the firm and determined general implementation of policies for the quality assurance ex-ante, during and ex-post of academic and teaching standards, I believe that we have reached an important, if not transcendent, point in this process.

I do in fact think that, after all this time, we have before us the first big important opportunity to start reducing the impact of what has become the excessive bureaucratisation of “quality” and the guided technocracy that has arisen around all these technical and formal procedures that have too often been excessively wrapped up in acronyms – just take the well-known VSMA, for example – which has very often led to negative suspicion and suffering among a large majority of the stakeholders. I am of the conviction that neither the QA agencies, like AQU Catalunya, the quality units at the universities in Catalonia, nor the vice-rectors' offices responsible for this have ever really budged an inch from wanting to see a deeply rooted, sustainable and authentic culture of quality develop instead of a merely technocratic one, in spite of the fact that, at times, it may have all seemed quite the opposite.

Hence, now is the time, if we can actually situate these policies and actions for monitoring and enhancing quality as close as possible to "where things happen", meaning HE institutions and their everyday functioning, for guidelines and processes associated with the monitoring of an institution's academic and teaching quality to become less tedious and more useful, following on from what is a higher level of authenticity throughout the system. Institutional autonomy and the full accountability of the universities can lead to a much higher level implementation of the quality culture and its values, as to the mere maintenance of structures for the purposes of monitoring and the accreditation of quality that are too often underlain by inter-institutional mistrust and the hierarchical and administrative paternalisation of processes.

The ability to finally undergo institutional accreditation, at a moment in time when institutions, at faculty level, now have a certain background and level of experience that is more cultural than technocratic, with most of their recognised degree programmes already accredited and with fairly stable, genuine and effective internal quality assurance systems that are capable of turning full circle, is one of the best pieces of news we've heard in a long time. The Pere Tarrés Faculty of Social Education and Social Work, which has just made this achievement, is the first in Catalonia to be an officially accredited learning provider. One by one and step-by-step, other faculties across Catalonia are now preparing to undergo accreditation in the dawning of what is a new more sustainable and hopeful stage for everybody involved.