Resumen de Quality of accreditation services for engineering programs
Lung-Sheng Lee, Hui-Min Ko, Mei-Tyng Wang
Accreditation of degree-granting engineering programs has been conducted for a decade in Taiwan and has contributed toraising the quality of engineering education. While quality is closely linked to stakeholders’ satisfaction, this study aimed toanswer how the accreditation stakeholders consider the quality of accreditation services. We employed a PZB modelcomprising five service gaps and five constructs to analyse service quality, and surveyed 230 program supervisors thatapplied for accreditation (consumers) and 218 accreditation assessors (service providers). Consequently, the followinggaps are found in the PZB (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry) model: (1) There is a gap between the assessors’ ‘‘perceivedconsumer expectations’’ and the program supervisors’ ‘‘expected services’’; in particular, the two-group gaps on ‘‘IEETaccreditation increases graduates international recognition and generates substantial benefit’’ and ‘‘assessors show respectfor others while undertaking their accreditation tasks’’ are large. (2)There is a gap between the assessors’ ‘‘perceived servicequality specification’’ and ‘‘the provision of service’’ (i.e. Gap 3 exists); and the most influential construct is ‘‘Reliability’’.(3) There is a gap between the program supervisors’ ‘‘expected services’’ and ‘‘perceived services’’ (i.e. Gap 5 exists); inparticular, the two-side gaps on the ‘‘IEET accreditation criteria reflect international trend’’ and ‘‘IEET reviews helpprograms improve the quality of education’’ are large and it indicates that the quality of accreditation services have not yetmet the expectations of the assessed programs. (4) Insufficient confidence in the reliability of accreditation criteria and theprovision of services. The results can be used for reference to improve engineering program accreditation practices,especially under the Washington Accord, and the process of which this study employed can be used to examine the servicequality of other institutional and program accreditation.
