The accreditation of Higher Education study programs

Public Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (PAAHE) is part of the external evaluation of the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the country. Under the Rules of Accreditation, article 10, all HEIs are subject to institutional and program accreditation periodically, in order to ensure provision of quality study programs and comparable with the European standards. Open Data Albania has taken into consideration the study programs, accredited by the Public Accreditation Agency for Higher Education, whether provided by public and private HEIs.

Currently, according to the Public Accreditation Agency for Higher Education, 1318  study programs operate in all HEIs in the country, 48.5 % of which are offered by public HEIs and the rest from private HEIs. 409 of them, or about 31 % , are accredited study programs, 92 or 7 % of total programs are in the process of accreditation, while there are 799 non accredited programs or about 61.4 % of the total.

^{Source:  Accreditation Agency for Higher Education
Processing and comments: ODA}

Most of the programs that are still not accredited belong to the Bachelor cycle of studies, where 231 programs or about 57% have not entered the process yet. Then, ranked as second, are the Scientific Master programs with about 209 non accredited ones, or about 56.3%, and Professional Master with 166 programs or 61% of total Professional Master programs offered. However, bear in mind that these figures could be even higher, because we haven?t included the programs that are involved in the accreditation process, which could potentially take a negative valuation and not get accredited.

^{Source:  Accreditation Agency for Higher Education
Processing and comments: ODA}

1. ^{Data for 1318 programs refer to the section on the official website of PAAHE:}
2. ^{http://aaal.edu.al/sq/?option=com_content&view=article&id=364&Itemid=156&lang=sq From the information reviewed  another discrepancy in the data is noted but in another section of the web’s official of PAAHE: http://www.aaal.edu.al/sq/publikime/informacione/1082-nis-viti-i-ri-akademik-2013-2014.html according to which the number of accredited programs is 1350.}
3. ^{The discrepancy and the figures of total study programs and the ones obtained by the classification based on their accreditation status information is due to the official website of PAAHE:}
4. ^{http://aaal.edu.al/sq/?option=com_content&vieë=article&id=364&Itemid=156&lang=sq However, the differences are relatively small in size and do not affect the analysis.}
5. ^{http://www.mash.gov.al/File/Arsimi%20privat/akreditimet/lista-programeve-te-akredituara-15-gusht-2013u.xls}
6. ^{http://www.aaal.edu.al/sq/statistika/te-dhena-per-programet.html}