IDENTIFYING BENEFITS OF SELF ACADEMIC REVIEW FOR NACTE PROGRAM-LEVEL ACCREDITATION: A CASE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD

The accreditation of academic programs with the respective council has become an important target of Higher Education Institutions to achieve. Higher Education Commission has established National Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (NACTE) with the aim to guide, evaluate, scrutinize and monitor the academic programs of Degree Awarding Institutions (DAI) and their affiliated colleges offering education degree programs. It has become a challenge for every DAI to align the academic standards with the standards set by the national accreditation councils of the respective program by conducting self academic review before the actual visit of the council. The research is now focusing on the benefits of the self academic review that further strengthens the process of accreditation with the national councils. The study aims to investigate the benefits of these reviews to highlight their importance and emphasize the mechanism of self-review for successful accreditation. A qualitative case study method of research is adopted in this study by taking 12 in-depth interviews from the qualified professionals, academic staff, administration, students and officials involved in the accreditation process. Relevant analytical techniques for validation of various generated themes from the transcribed data. Coding nodes, word tree, word tag clouds and tree maps were generated. The perspectives of the respondents were analyzed to identify the impact and benefits of self academic review of the academic programs of the selected university. The study gives findings of the thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews. The features of the self-review, its benefits, and challenges faced by the quality managers are also discovered in the conclusion and discussion part of the study. The study gives future directions for potential research avenues.