Abstract
The growing number of Higher Education Institutions have called for the need for greater distinction between them. Apart from ranking that has been in place for some time, now Higher Education Institutions seek to differentiate through quality assurance certification such as institutional accreditation. Despite of its popularity there is limited evidence as how it impacts its employees at different levels and how they perceive the whole process during and after. Thus, the present study was set out to examine the challenges and opportunities perceived by different stakeholders of the organization during and after the institutional accreditation. Data was collected using self-administered surveys with open ended questions from employees of a local higher education institute. Results from the content analysis shows that most of the employees across all departments were positive and holds an optimistic view of the institutional accreditation. The main challenges faced were lack of experience, and perhaps interdepartmental communication along the bureaucratic procedures involved. Opportunities at the institutional level were namely related to autonomy in revising and launching of new programmes. But this was also a concern expressed by academics as it would increase the workload. There are also personal benefits that were identified such as better career prospects and increased recognition. Some of these results were different amongst faculty members and administrative staff and thus implications were drawn to address stakeholders independently.
Biography
Ka I (Doris) Ip is an Assistant Professor and the Regent for Languages at the Macao Institute for Tourism Studies.
She has been teaching English at tertiary level for thirty years. Besides teaching English as a second language to college students, Doris has also been involved in the development of JAE since the beginning. In 2021 and 2022, Doris worked on the Programme Accreditation and Institutional Accreditation for her institute. Doris’s major research interests include language learning motivation, learning strategies and teaching methodology.
Prior to joining IFT, Henrique F. Boyol Ngan was responsible for the creation and implementation of corporate training and development solutions in the gaming industry. He has taught courses in the fields of social psychology, psychology of work, human resource management and organizational behavior. His research interests include job satisfaction and promotion perceptions, advertising effectiveness, emotional display in service marketing and psychological pricing which have been published in various journals indexed in SSCI. Other projects include consultancy for the Macau SAR government on personnel planning and forecasting (man power demand).