Accreditation, or gaining credit for completed education programmes, is recognised and handled differently by every country. This makes global transferability of credits and the recognition of course levels from country to country a big challenge in education. For example, a Ph.D. course in England that is marked at a level eight may be marked at a level twelve in Scotland, just a border away. Many countries don’t even have a levelling system. Likewise, taking a course worth three credits toward an MBA in the U.S. might equate to 10 credits towards your degree in the U.K., and it varies from school to school within countries as well.
As the largest global marketplace for online learning courses, Gatlin International frequently receives many concerns over accreditation. Will the course a student takes in one country mean anything to an employer or school in another country? What level is this course?
We now live in a small world with a true global marketplace. Corporations are international and professionals are mobile. While various national accreditation organisations exist, in today’s world of international commerce we need to make one global accreditation system. Here are the top six reasons why:
1. Educational institutions need global accreditation so that they can market their courses to a larger audience. As of now, if a school wants to write and sell a course, they can put a level on it, but it won’t necessarily mean anything in another country. In addition, students will be wary of taking the course because it might not have value in other parts of the world. A course that is recognised in every country makes it more worthwhile for students to take and therefore more profitable for schools to offer. With global accreditation standards, each educational institution is no longer relegated to one small region but can open its online offerings to the entire globe.
2. Global accreditation will cut out duplication of courses. For example, right now the same courses are being created over and over to meet slightly different standards in each country. All of the courses may contain the same or similar information but end up with different levelling and credits attached depending on where they are taken. Once again, how much weight the course or programme carries in another country is left to subjective conclusion.
3. For small businesses that use online learning as an affordable and time-efficient solution for business development, global accreditation is essential. International businesses that have team members spread around the world need standardised training. They also need to know that the certifications received will carry the same weight in any country in which they go to compete, all education and training needs to be globally transferrable.
4. Global accreditation will give individuals confidence that they can achieve their career goals no matter what type of learning environment (online, classroom, blended) or its location. As of now, the only way to answer the question “Is this course valuable in my country” is to take it to an employer and have them look it over for credibility. Standardised levels and credits will assure that, upon course completion, employers will know the meaning and value of the programme or course taken no matter where the student is or where they end up in the world.
5. If an individual intends to transfer credits from one institution to another, global accreditation is necessary so that the education they have received elsewhere will count towards their graduation in a new location. For example, if a student in China needs 10 credit hours to finish their bachelor’s degree in fitness business management and then moves to India, the accreditation standards there might require him to complete 15 credit hours for the same degree. The accreditation system in India does not fully recognise the work he completed in China, and the student winds up a step behind. Global accreditation will save students the time of re-taking the same course elsewhere just to re-gain the level or number of credits they have already earned.
6. The lack of global accreditation not only applies to academic qualifications but is also a large problem in vocational training. Industry-wide courses need to follow a global standard of learning, therefore being equivalent in quality and setting a fixed amount of credits so that vocational training can lead to higher education and on to post grad/professional level without difficulty. For example, some vocational courses sit below the level of a degree (level 6…..depending on where you are!) and some have no level at all. What happens when vocational courses are also professional courses such as bookkeeping courses for accountants? There needs to be a universal level for these courses so that a diploma or certificate of higher education can be achieved without having to take the same course over again in another location.
While there is an accreditation system in place for all of Europe, the whole world needs to come together on this issue. The first step to global accreditation is to take every online course and level it on a worldwide levelling scale. Education needs a group of scholarly individuals to come together and agree on a system of levels that can be transferable across the globe. From there, software can be built using the universal levelling system and courses can be marked efficiently and effectively.
