QAHE Insights

Dr. Carmen Vásquez — Peer Evaluator, National Accreditation Council
Former Director of Quality Assurance, Universidad de Venezuela

It happened to me in 2018. I was leading an accreditation visit to a private university in the north of the country. Five days of review: curricula, infrastructure, research output, graduate placement rates. Everything checked out. The institution had invested heavily in documentation: thick binders for each program, color-coded indicators, satisfaction surveys with 85% approval.

On the third day, during a scheduled break, I wandered into the cafeteria unannounced. A student approached me —not knowing who I was— and asked if I could help her find the coordinator of her program. She had been trying to drop out for three weeks. No one had answered her emails. Her mother was ill, she needed to work, and she felt “invisible to this university.”

I walked with her to the administrative office. The coordinator was in a meeting. The secretary said she could leave a message. The student sat down and cried. I stayed with her for twenty minutes. Then I returned to my evaluation team and recommended —against the quantitative evidence— that this program be accredited with conditions.

My colleagues were uncomfortable. “The indicators are solid,” they said. “One anecdote doesn’t change the data.” But I had seen something the binders couldn’t capture: the quality of the institutional encounter was broken. The student was a number that didn’t add up to anyone’s attention.

That day I understood something that Dasbien Theory helped me name years later: the Zone of Balanced Interaction (ZIE) between institution and student was in red. And our accreditation models were colorblind.

The diagnosis: accreditation without subjectivization

Higher education accreditation has optimized processes. We have standardized rubrics, international benchmarks, evidence-based assessment. But we have stopped asking what happens in the relationship between institution and student.

Current instruments evaluate outputs: graduation rates, research productivity, infrastructure ratios. Or measure satisfaction: graduate surveys, employer perception. But none evaluate whether institutional care —the educational service provided— is received as good according to who receives it.

The World Bank, in its 2018 report on education quality, noted that “learning outcomes depend fundamentally on the interaction between teachers and students, yet these interactions remain the least measured dimension of educational systems.” We accredit buildings and bibliographies while the human encounter erodes.

In my years as evaluator, we assumed. We assumed that low dropout meant student wellbeing. That high satisfaction meant quality learning. That full classrooms meant engaged students. Rarely did we ask: “And the students, what do they need from this institution for their specific life projects?”

Robert Birnbaum, in How Colleges Work, wrote that “colleges are organized anarchies” where “goals are unclear, technologies are uncertain, and participation is fluid.” Our accreditation pretends order where there is chaos, and ignores the chaos where life actually happens.

The case of the northern university: from indicators to ZIE

Let’s return to that 2018 visit. After recommending conditional accreditation, I was invited —unofficially— to explain myself to the university rector. I didn’t cite regulations. I told him about the student in the cafeteria. I asked him: “What does this institution give to someone who needs to leave? Not to retain her, for her life.”

He was silent. Then he admitted: “We have seventeen people in retention services. None in dignified exit support.” We designed together —outside the formal accreditation process— a protocol: any student requesting withdrawal would receive a personal interview within 48 hours, not to convince them to stay, but to understand why they were leaving and offer appropriate referrals.

The protocol was implemented six months later. Dropout rates initially rose —because students who had been “ghosting” now formally withdrew— but then stabilized below previous levels. More importantly, exit surveys showed students felt “seen” even in leaving. The program was fully accredited two years later, but the rector told me: “That conversation in my office changed more than the official report.”

That is institutional ZIE: a relationship where the accreditor subjectivizes (finds out what the institution and its students really need), intends (designs adjusted evaluation criteria), and feeds back (verifies that accreditation arrives as care, not as inspection). The university didn’t need more indicators. It needed indicators connected to human dignity.

Accreditation as network of invisible encounters

The problem is not that there is no ZIE in accreditation. It’s that it is fragmented, invisible, not institutionalized.

In my years as evaluator, I witnessed: a peer reviewer who extended a visit to accompany a grieving student who had lost a classmate. An administrative team that kept unofficial “wellbeing files” on students at risk, outside any formal protocol. A rector who met monthly with students who had formally complained, not to defend the institution but to listen. Cares that worked, but isolated. Without regulatory recognition, without possibility of becoming standard practice.

Accreditation, in Dasbienian terms, had punctual subjectivization, individual intentionality, null feedback. Each evaluator who cared did so despite the system, not thanks to it.

This contrasts with what quality assurance theory itself proposes: the continuous improvement cycle of Deming (Plan-Do-Check-Act) requires that evaluation inform practice, not just certify it. Yet our accreditation cycles are too long, too distant from the lived experience of students and teachers.

Proposal: three changes for accreditation systems

I do not propose abandoning standardized assessment. I propose complementing it with evaluation of the institutional relationship as a dimension autonomously ethical.

First: the subjectivization visit

Before any formal evaluation, accreditors conduct unannounced encounters: cafeteria conversations, waiting room observations, follow-up calls to students who recently withdrew. Not as undercover investigation, but as diagnostic humility: understanding what the institution is for those who inhabit it daily.

This is not espionage. It is grounded evaluation. The accreditor needs to know whether they are assessing a research university, a regional comprehensive, a professional school, or an institution in crisis. Each profile requires different criteria of care.

The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), in its 2015 standards, recognized that “quality assurance should take into account the diversity of higher education institutions and their missions.” But diversity without subjectivization becomes mere taxonomy.

Second: the adjusted intentionality

The accreditation rubric should not be rigid. It should have zones of flexibility where the evaluator, having subjectivized, adjusts weightings. Concrete examples:

• For institutions serving first-generation students: prioritize support services over research output.
• For programs with high labor market insertion: validate employer satisfaction through direct interview, not only survey response rates.
• For institutions in economic crisis: assess contingency planning for student wellbeing, not only financial sustainability.

This generates risks: more time for evaluators, more contestation of decisions, less comparability across institutions. But it generates ZIE: the institution receives evaluation adjusted to its reality, not generic punishment or praise.

As Lee Harvey and Bjørn Stensaker noted in Quality in Higher Education, “quality is not a property of an institution but a relationship between the institution and its stakeholders.” Accreditation must evaluate that relationship, not just the institution’s properties.

Third: the systematic feedback

At mid-cycle, accreditors ask explicitly: “Is this accreditation process helping you improve? For what is it serving you? What would you need to be different?”

And adjust. Not the final decision —that requires integrity— but the process, the communication, the support offered. The institution sees that its perception matters, that evaluation is negotiable in service of genuine improvement, that care is verified, not assumed.

Current accreditation cycles arrive late (every 5-7 years) and are unidirectional. Dasbienian feedback is early and dialogical: it allows correcting the institutional trajectory, not just judging it. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) in the United States has experimented with “formative peer review” between cycles, but these remain optional and under-resourced.

Honest limits

Not everything is ZIE. There are standards institutions do not know they need and accreditors must impose: financial accountability, academic integrity, minimum qualifications. Subjectivization does not mean accepting any institutional claim, but understanding it in order to guide improvement.

Neither is feedback relativism. Accreditors have expertise and public trust that institutions do not have. ZIE is not “doing what the institution wants.” It is negotiating educational wellbeing, where both learn to adjust expectations in service of student flourishing.

There are institutions, like that northern university in 2018, that do not know their own students. Subjectivization with them requires patience, open questions, time. It is not efficient. But it is effective in the long term: the institution that finds authentic purpose improves, the one that does not persists in performative compliance.

To apply today: checklist ZIE-accreditor

 

Moment	Question Dasbien	Concrete Action
Pre-visit preparation	Did you subjectivize?	Unannounced encounters with students and staff before formal evaluation
On-site evaluation	Did you adjust intention?	At least 30% of criteria interpreted through lens of institutional specific mission and student profile
Mid-cycle	Did you feedback?	Explicit request for institutional perception of evaluation usefulness and process adjustment
Final decision	Did you verify wellbeing?	Assessment not only of compliance achieved, but of transformation perceived by those evaluated

References

Figueroa Cárdenas, A. K. (2010). Das Bien. Fondo Editorial UNMSM.

Figueroa Cárdenas, A. K. (2025). Theory of Dasbien Life. Editorial Tecnologías Dasbien.

World Bank. (2018). World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Birnbaum, R. (1988). How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Harvey, L., & Stensaker, B. (2008). Quality assurance in higher education: Some international trends and challenges. Quality in Higher Education, 14(1), 5-22.

ENQA. (2015). Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. Brussels: European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education.

CHEA. (2016). Formative Peer Review: A Guide for Good Practice. Washington, DC: Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press