Outcome and Future Plan

Since the date of its establishment, the ACC has been operating and fulfilling its duties despite the lack of both human resources and financial supports. The ACC has developed a number of legislative policies such as Credit System, Credit Transfer, Guidelines for the Foundation Year Program, the Institutional Minimum Standards and has conducted assessments and accreditation on the Foundation Year Program (first year of bachelor program) since 2005. To date, the Foundation Year Programs of 55 HEIs receive full accreditation, that of 19 HEIs receive provisional accreditation, and that of 5 HEIs receive non accreditation. the ACC has about 200 trained assessors. To implement the nine standards effectively, the ACC has developed two sets of handbooks of institutional accreditation: one is designed to provide Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with guidelines for preparing institutional accreditation, and another is designed to provide the ACC external assessors with guidelines for institutional assessment and accreditation. The ACC is going to launch its institutional accreditation in 2012. In terms of capacity building and international cooperation, the ACC became a full member of APQN in 2006, a member of AQAN in 2008 and has sent its staff to attend training workshops and internships hosted by various accreditation agencies in the region such as in Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Australia and Thailand.

In addition to the institutional accreditation, the ACC is going to conduct assessment and accreditation on post graduate programs and it is now in the process of developing its guidelines, policies and procedures for accreditation of the graduate programs. This initiative was introduced to address concerns raised by the Royal Government and society over the quality of graduate students with inadequate qualifications.  Besides these,  the ACC is also going to perform other functions such as advocacy, research and publications to promote best practices and quality awareness with a view to developing a quality culture in the Cambodian higher education sector. To advocate this, the ACC will use technological equipment to manage the results of the assessment and accreditation. Through the promotion of best practices and experiences, higher education institutions will be able to learn from one another and adapt them to suit their own context.