Quality management of programme reaccreditation at private higher education institutions in South Africa

Abstract

Private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa must apply to the Higher Education Quality Committee, a standing committee of the Council on Higher Education (CHE), for the reaccreditation of existing accredited programmes. This article explores the internal quality management systems at PHEIs to manage the programme reaccreditation process. The conceptual framework for this study is the PHEI Open System Model which presumes the PHEI to be an open system. In an open system in this model, ‘input’ is filtered from the external to the internal environment and catalyses the conversion of resources (‘throughput’) into ‘output’, i.e., a reaccredited programme. The responses of a purposive sample of PHEIs were considered. This is a qualitative study whereby data was collected through semi-structured interviews which served to investigate how PHEIs manage the programme reaccreditation process and whether they present as open systems.