A Decade of Chilean Graduate Program Accreditation: A Push for Internationalization and Issues of Multidisciplinarity
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Original Article
A Decade of Chilean Graduate Program Accreditation: A Push for Internationalization and Issues of Multidisciplinarity Sergio Celisa
and Daniela Ve´lizb
a
Escuela de Ingenierı´a y Ciencias, FCFM, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. E-mail: [email protected] Facultad de Educacio´n, Pontifı´cia Universidad Cato´lica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
b
Chile implemented a new national quality assurance system for its higher education institutions in 2006 that included a set of policies and procedures for graduate education. Ten years after its implementation, this study looks at the perceived alignments and misalignments between the national accreditation goals and the graduate programs’ visions of improvement. By using the concept of loosely coupled systems, we studied eight science and technology master’s and doctoral programs at four research-oriented Chilean universities. In total, we conducted 26 interviews, visited all campus sites, and analyzed related documents. The results indicate that the national accreditation system improved academic quality across programs by strengthening the influence of university central administrations and raising faculty productivity standards. In particular, the accreditation meant a push for internationalization, which was welcomed at all institutional levels. However, after a decade, the accreditation system seems misaligned with programs’ new improvement efforts, such as the promotion of multidisciplinary work. To some extent, accreditation standards, based on strong disciplinary orientations, penalize a diverse student body and curricular innovation and do not consider the challenges of publishing multidisciplinary research. Higher Education Policy (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-020-00198-7 Keywords: graduate education; internationalization; loosely coupled systems; quality assurance
Introduction Chile established its first National System of Quality Assurance in 2006, which affected higher education institutions across multiple dimensions, but particularly graduate education. This system was intended to be a ‘‘public certification of the processes and results of institutions and their programs.’’1 Simultaneously, between 2007 and 2016, graduate education program enrollment more than doubled
Sergio Celis and Daniela Ve´liz A Decade of Chilean Graduate Program Accreditation
50,000 45,000 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 -
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Doctoral
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Master's
Figure 1. Growth in graduate education enrollment in Chile. Source: Higher Education Information Service (SIES, 2016).
(Figure 1), and the number of master’s and doctoral programs increased substantially (Table 1). Thus, as Chilean graduate education experienced rapid growth, institutions and their master’s and doctoral programs also had to manage a new and strict accreditation process, which is primarily conducted by the Comisio´n Nacional de Acreditacio´n (CNA: National Commission of Accreditation). CNA’s accreditation proc
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