Explaining the Role of Accreditation in Internationalization of Higher Education System: A grounded Theory Study

The purpose of this study was to Developing model for Role of Higher Education Accreditation with an Emphasis on its Internationalization

In this qualitative study, 20 academic experts were selected as the sample through purposive snowball sampling. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the participants, and then the codes, concepts, and categories related to the higher education accreditation model were extracted based on grounded theory (GT).

In this study, 101 codes were extracted and then they were classified into 62 clusters of concepts and 28 axial codes based on their similarities. Finally, an accreditation model was designed for the higher education internationalization.

The results of in-depth semi-structured interviews were employed to develop a model consisting of 3 causal conditions and 9 confounding factors. The pivotal concept of this model was “quality assurance”, both as a goal and as a means of achieving this goal, which was influenced by environmental conditions: political instability, state economy, social capital, and avoidance of uncertainty and individualistic cultural contexts. Based on the study findings, it can be concluded that the government, policymakers, and academic centers need to adopt strategies in order to achieve national and transnational objectives in this regard.