The representatives of the Independent agency for accreditation and rating (IAAR) have attended the Annual Conference of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) on “Accreditation, Higher Education and the Innovation Environment: Moving Beyond the Present” which was held on January 28-30, 2013, in Washington D.C. Along with this, in the framework of the Conference, the annual meeting of the CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG) was held on January 30-31, 2013, in which the IAAR is the member from the September 2012. These events were attended by the representatives of educational and accreditation community from various countries around the world.

The Conference was dedicated to modern and contemporary issues of international processes in the field of higher education and accreditation, including the following topics: Higher Education, Quality Assurance and the International Climate; Accreditation, A New Administration and a New Congress; Accreditation and Academic Freedom: The AAUP-CHEA Advisory Statement; Accreditation and Electronic Technology; MOOCs and Accreditation; The Future of Legal Education; Institutional Governance and the Role of Accreditation; Accreditation and Federal Policy; The Future of the Credit Hour; Are We “Academically Adrift” and What is Accreditation’s Responsibility?; The For-Profit Sector: Where is it Now and Where Does it Want To Be?

In her speech, Secretary General of European University Association (Brussels, Belgium) Lesley Wilson noted that today we can speak about Kazakhstan as a full-fledged European state in the field of education and accreditation, due to the great changes and achievements in the educational process in Kazakhstan in recent years.

At the Annual Meeting of the CIQG the basic concept of the CHEA International Quality Group, focusing on its main objective of advancing the understanding of international quality issues in higher education in today’s competitive and international world was introduced.

During this meeting the following topics were presented by international experts working in education: Trends and Issues in International Higher Education: Implications for Quality Assurance; Academic Corruption: What Do We Know, What Do We Need to Know and What Do We Do?; The Open Education Movement: Challenges and Opportunities for Quality Assurance; Higher Education Systems in Transition: Quality Assurance in Central and Eastern Europe; How Well is Higher Education Addressing Global Economic and Employment Challenges?

This Conference served as a dialogue platform for the representatives of the different countries of the world. During the Conference, not only current problems of higher education and accreditation were discussed, but also an exchange of experiences and views between representatives of different educational systems and states took place.

For actively developing Kazakhstan it is important to know how and what is going on institutional and specialized accreditation, not only in Europe but also in the USA, with their traditional, well-established procedures for assessing the quality of higher education. As a result of the International Conference experts from Kazakhstan had a chance to get a closer look at accreditation system of the West, and to establish professional contacts with the representatives of various countries, including the United States, Belgium, Poland and Croatia.