Accreditation: Tools for achieving quality, not uniformity
Do accreditation processes make universities look the same, or do universities become similar because of how they use accreditation? This question is being asked more and more often in higher education today.
It is asked even more frequently in Türkiye. In recent years, national authorities have set clear targets about accreditation. The Council of Higher Education and the Turkish Higher Education Quality Council have announced goals to include almost all universities in accreditation processes by 2027.
This includes not only institutional accreditation, but also the accreditation of many individual study programs.
Because of these national targets, accreditation is no longer a distant or optional topic for universities in Türkiye. It has become a daily discussion topic for rectors, deans, quality offices and academic staff. As more institutions enter these processes, conversations about standards, similarity and 'looking alike' have become more visible and more intense.
Why standards matter
Accreditation is mainly a tool to protect and improve the quality of education. In the European Higher Education Area, the main reference for quality assurance is the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG). However, in practice, these standards are sometimes seen as a reason for uniformity. Similar reports, repeated titles and the same expressions can create the feeling that universities are becoming increasingly alike.
But standards do not define what 'good education' is and they do not tell universities exactly what to do. They provide a framework. They help institutions ask the right questions about what they are doing and why. The problem usually begins when standards are treated like a simple checklist instead of a thinking tool.
Standardisation often starts at this point. Instead of questioning their own teaching methods and systems, universities may try only to comply with the structures outlined in the standards.
Quality assurance then moves away from understanding what is really happening inside the institution. It becomes a process of checking whether documents are complete. This situation is often described as 'checkbox accreditation', a system focused on ticking boxes and producing documents rather than reflecting on real quality.
When institutions stop asking "What did we learn from this process?" and start asking only "Did we tick all the boxes?" the culture of quality slowly turns into a culture of paperwork.
Continuous improvement
The internal quality assurance approach promoted by the ESG is not about producing reports. It is about evidence-based evaluation, feedback and continuous improvement.
Even so, in many systems, quality processes slowly change into tools that make inspections easier instead of education better.
The focus shifts from understanding to showing, from improving to finishing tasks.
The common principles of the ESG do not remove a university's identity. On the contrary, when they are used correctly, they can make institutional differences clearer by showing why and how they exist.
Meaningful accreditation
For this reason, standards should not be seen as final results but as tools that create questions. The criticism that standards make universities similar usually comes from the way they are applied, not from the standards themselves.
Discussions should not only ask "Are we becoming the same?" A more important question is "How well can we explain our differences?" Accreditation becomes meaningful when institutions can openly show their academic choices, strengths and weaknesses.
Otherwise, quality processes risk becoming short-term preparation periods instead of a living culture inside universities.
Another issue is how 'evidence' is understood. Qualitative feedback, student experiences or context-specific practices are often seen as less safe than standard tables or template texts.
This creates a false sense of security. What makes universities look similar is usually not the standards, but the way they are read and used.
In the end, the real question is not whether accreditation standardises universities. The real question is whether quality assurance makes institutions think or only produce the correct documents. Standards improve quality when they encourage reflection. When they replace reflection, only well-written texts remain.
Accreditation does not standardise universities. Mechanical compliance does.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260227130106594