A Postcolonial Case Study of the Assumptions, Positioning, and Perspectives of U.S. Higher Education Accreditors Operating in the Anglophone Caribbean Region

U.S. higher education accreditation is increasingly sought by international higher education institutions (HEIs) as a quality-assurance mechanism and as a way to improve competitiveness for mobile students in the twenty-first century. When U.S. higher education accreditation is implemented outside the United States, there is the potential for the neocolonization of international higher education systems, particularly those in the Global South, because of the unexamined assumptions that underpin the accreditation process. This study utilized postcolonial theory to investigate the implicit assumptions, positioning, and perspectives of U.S. higher education accreditors that operate in the Anglophone Caribbean region. Five U.S. accreditors participated in this qualitative, instrumental case study. Accreditation-agency staff members were interviewed and accreditor policy manuals were examined, and the data was analyzed using thematic network analysis. Thirteen findings emerged from the study, which led to the following conclusions: U.S. accreditors have the potential to enact Western hegemony, institutional isomorphism, and neocolonization on international higher education systems because of the U.S. higher education norms and practices that dominate the accreditation process; U.S. accreditors could be more transparent about evaluating international HEIs against U.S. norms and standards and their inability to evaluate international HEIs within their own national, cultural, educational, and financial contexts; U.S. accreditors overstate the risks and dangers when conducting accreditation outside the United States and largely ignore those within the United States, and accreditors should have policies in place to mitigate these dangers and risks irrespective of location; and accreditors could do more to become truly global in order to operate ethically outside the United States, such as understanding educational norms and standards in international contexts, soliciting increased representation from international HEIs on site visit teams and commissions (i.e., decision-making bodies), and forming inter-national accreditation agencies so that U.S. accreditors operate in cooperation rather than isolation outside the United States.

Author

• Martello, Nicole

• accreditation
• Anglophone Caribbean
• Global South
• neocolonization
• Postcolonial Theory

Identifier

hdl:1920/13814

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/13814