Cultural Diversity and Accreditation

The expansion of distance education in higher education world-wide has brought forth the issue of quality assurance and evaluation processes for institutions and programmes. Though quality is a perception about the performance in products and services offered, it is expected to be shaped through mutual consent in the eyes of internal and external stakeholders of the institutions. Despite the different needs, social contexts and cultures of higher education institutions, general standards have been developed to guide distance education providers in their quest. This paper concentrates on external evaluation pillar of quality assurance that is accreditation according to American, European and Asian perspectives and tries to explain the shared understanding about quality in higher education in the face of cultural diversity. A case-study, the quality journey of Anadolu University, Open Education System is described as an example of different ways leading to the same target.