The Education Market Has Changed. Quality Assurance Must Change With It.

Digital education is no longer a peripheral delivery model. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, 10.76 million of 19.66 million students enrolled in U.S. degree-granting postsecondary institutions in fall 2024 — 54.7% — took at least one distance-education course. More than 5.21 million students, or 26.5% of the total, were enrolled exclusively in distance education.¹

Those numbers matter because scale changes the quality-assurance question. When digital learning reaches millions of students, institutions need more than a learning-management system, attractive course pages, or persuasive marketing. They need governance, academic design, qualified personnel, learner support, technology infrastructure, assessment, financial stewardship, integrity, and evidence that their systems work together.

The OECD reached a similar conclusion in its study of digital higher education. Its review noted the emergence of fully online and hybrid programs and examined how quality-assurance systems can adapt to digital delivery, including the need for institutions to strengthen internal quality-management policies and processes for digital teaching and learning.²

International quality-assurance practice likewise treats delivery mode as a context to be evaluated, not as a substitute for quality. The European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area state that their standards are designed to apply to higher education regardless of place or mode of delivery, and they distinguish between internal quality assurance, external quality assurance, and the quality assurance of agencies themselves.³

Accreditation as an Improvement System — Not a Display Item

In public conversation, accreditation is often reduced to a yes-or-no status: accredited or not accredited. But the underlying quality-assurance work is much broader. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation describes accreditation as a review of the quality of higher education institutions and programs and explains that, in the United States, accreditors are private, nongovernmental organizations created to review institutions and programs for quality.⁴

The improvement dimension is visible across established accreditation practice. The Higher Learning Commission’s current Criteria for Accreditation, for example, connect institutional effectiveness with continuous improvement, assessment of student learning, periodic program review, and improvement in student-success outcomes.⁵ The point is not that every quality-assurance framework must look identical. It is that meaningful review should lead institutions to examine evidence, make judgments about effectiveness, and act on what they learn.

That distinction matters. A seal, certificate, listing, or public status can communicate that a review occurred. It cannot, by itself, create academic quality. Quality comes from the systems behind the representation: what leaders govern, what faculty teach, what students experience, what data reveal, what institutions disclose, and how weaknesses are corrected.

What a Serious Quality-Assurance Process Should Test

A strong review process should force useful institutional questions—not questions designed merely to produce documents, but questions that reveal whether an institution can connect mission, operations, learning, evidence, and accountability.

The Difference Between Compliance, Capacity, and Maturity

Compliance is necessary, but compliance alone is not the same as institutional quality. A useful way to think about quality assurance is as a progression from having requirements on paper to demonstrating that systems work and improve.

This is why self-study is valuable when it is done well. A self-study should not be an exercise in assembling favorable descriptions. It should be an institutional diagnosis: a structured examination of strengths, vulnerabilities, evidence, risks, and priorities for improvement.

The Evidence Chain: From Claim to Improvement

Institutions often have large volumes of documentation but still struggle to demonstrate effectiveness. The issue is usually not the amount of material; it is whether the evidence forms a coherent chain. A credible quality-assurance process should help institutions connect five elements:

When one of those links is missing, quality assurance becomes weaker. A claim without evidence is assertion. Evidence without judgment is information. Judgment without action is observation. Continuous improvement occurs when the institution can trace a concern from evidence to decision, from decision to action, and from action to a later measure of whether the change worked.

The IACDE Quality Assurance Framework

The International Accrediting Commission for Digital Education developed its Quality Assurance Framework around 10 Core Accreditation Standards: Mission and Purpose; Governance and Leadership; Academic Programs and Curriculum; Faculty and Staff Qualifications; Student Support Services; Learning Resources and Technology; Financial Stability and Integrity; Assessment and Continuous Improvement; Integrity and Transparency; and Commitment to Innovation and Access.⁶

The framework is designed to evaluate more than institutional presentation. IACDE’s published process includes application and eligibility review, candidacy document verification, institutional self-study, peer review evaluation, Commission review and decision, and ongoing compliance monitoring.⁶

That sequence is intentional. An institution should enter quality assurance prepared to do more than submit documents. It should be prepared to examine whether its policies are operational, whether evidence supports its claims, whether gaps need correction, and whether improvement can be sustained after a review is complete.

What an Institution Should Be Able to Produce After Serious Self-Study

A well-executed self-study should leave behind more than a submitted report. It should create institutional assets that remain useful after the review itself. Depending on institutional scope and model, those assets may include:

Transparency Is Part of Quality

Credibility also requires accurate representation of what accreditation does — and what it does not do. In the United States, recognition of accrediting organizations by the U.S. Department of Education and CHEA is a separate matter from the existence of a private accreditation or quality-assurance organization. CHEA distinguishes recognized accrediting organizations from accreditation generally.⁴

IACDE publicly states that it is a private, independent, voluntary quality-assurance and accrediting organization and that it is not currently recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or CHEA. IACDE also states that its accreditation does not, by itself, confer U.S. federal student-aid eligibility, professional licensure, governmental authorization, or other benefits for which a specific recognized accreditation is legally required.⁷

That disclosure is not peripheral to quality assurance. It is part of it. Institutions should accurately represent their legal authority, approvals, exemptions, licenses, accreditation status, and the limitations of every credential or recognition they hold. Students, employers, regulators, partners, and receiving institutions should be able to verify claims without having to interpret ambiguous language.

What Institutional Leaders Should Ask Before Seeking Accreditation

Before choosing any accreditor or quality-assurance partner, leaders should look beyond the seal and ask what the process will require of the institution. The following questions provide a practical starting point:

1. Are the standards public? An institution should know the criteria before entering the process.
2. Does the process require evidence and self-study? Quality judgments should be grounded in more than assertions or marketing materials.
3. Is there professional external review and a defined decision process? Review should not depend solely on one person’s discretion.
4. Are status, scope, complaints, appeals, conflicts, and continuing obligations transparent? Due process and public verification matter.
5. Does the framework fit the institution’s delivery model? Digital, hybrid, self-paced, cohort-based, and technology-enhanced education require quality questions that reflect how learners actually experience the institution.
6. Will the process make the institution more capable? The strongest outcome is not simply a new badge. It is a stronger institution.

A Practical Quality-Assurance Diagnostic for Institutional Leaders

Institutions do not need to wait for an external review to begin strengthening quality. Leaders can use the following internal diagnostic to identify where evidence is strong and where the institution may need deeper work before or during accreditation.

A Better Standard for the Conversation

The future of accreditation should not be framed as a choice between innovation and standards. Digital education needs both. Innovation without accountability can create risk. Accountability without room for new models can become disconnected from how learners actually study. The work of quality assurance is to bring those priorities together: innovation that can be examined, educational claims that can be evidenced, systems that can be improved, and institutional representations that can be verified.

For IACDE, that is the purpose behind the phrase “Accreditation should make your institution better — not simply make it look the part.” The value of quality assurance should be visible not only in what an institution can display after a review, but in what the institution understands, strengthens, documents, and sustains because it went through the process.