ABSTRACT
Countries experiencing rapid growth in higher education enrollments oen face a thorny problem. When enrollments grow faster than qualied instructors can be recruited and trained, and faster than administrative and quality assurance systems can be designed and eectively implemented, quality declines. Seeking to protect and assure quality, some countries have turned to international aliations, pairing local higher education institutions (HEIs) with well-established international counterparts. e aliated HEI typically has some level of responsibility for assuring the academic integrity of the instruction at the local college or university. is “outsourcing” of quality assurance provides credibility and, oen, a mechanism for capacity development. is chapter focuses on the experience of Oman in using international aliations in higher education. But the story has a twist. On a per capita basis, the higher education system in Oman is arguably the fastest growing in the world, a growth rate that put considerable pressure on academic quality. A well-conceived and largely successful eort to assure quality of national HEIs through a system of international aliations ultimately led to unanticipated consequences that slowed the government’s eventual eort to introduce its own national accreditation system.
