Quality assurance through accreditation: When resistance meets over-compliance

Abstract

A large number of countries worldwide have established quality assurance mechanisms in Higher Education, ranging from the long-engrained system (United States) to more recent developments in Europe, Latin America and other regions. This study explores the way Higher Education institutions, as examples of autonomous organisations, respond to a new set of regulatory policies. The analysis of the regulatees shows that university-wide administration has gone beyond the letter of required regulations, toward over-compliance. Far from a stereotype of a main external regulator (accreditation agency) trying to impose the stated regulations and the regulatee simply resisting, the latter adds a kind of self-regulation. Below the university-wide administration, at the programme level—the primary regulatee target of external regulators—matters take more typical, anticipated form. Mixed compliance characterises programme-level responses, including resistance strategies. Findings illuminate not only the Argentine case but also other countries that have established quality assurance agencies.