Judith Eaton, President of the U.S. Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) served as a keynote speaker at an “International Accreditation Seminar on Higher Education,” earlier this month in Ulaanbaatar. Organizers for the two-day seminar included the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; the Mongolian National Council for Education Accreditation; the Institute of Finance and Economics, one of Mongolia´s largest educational institutions; the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) and CHEA. The seminar also was sponsored by the Economic Policy Reform and Competitiveness Project of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

At the seminar, Eaton addressed how higher education is structured in the United States and how accreditation promotes academic quality. In separate remarks, Eaton reviewed the process institutions outside the United States must pursue to obtain accreditation from a U.S. regional or national accrediting organization.

“The seminar was an important opportunity to join with colleagues from Mongolia and other countries to focus on accreditation and quality assurance in higher education,” Eaton said. “This is a valuable example of the emergence of a strong and dedicated international quality assurance community, bound together by common interests in access, student success and student mobility.”

The seminar brought together education and accreditation stakeholders from the United States and Central Asia to examine the importance of global recognition for a country´s higher education institutions and accreditation´s vital role in quality assurance.

Speakers at the seminar included Yo. Otgonbayar, Minister of Education, Culture and Science; D. Batjargal, President of the Institute of Finance and Economics; Douglas Viehland, Executive Director of ACBSP; Steve Parscale, ACBSP´s Director of Accreditation; and representatives from the Siberian State Aerospace University, the Kazakh-American Free University and the Mongolian National Council for Education Accreditation.