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<p>Academic accreditation is commonly described as a quality assurance process, yet its decisions may affect institutional reputation, programme continuity, student expectations and public confidence. This article examines how accreditation review reports can remain procedurally defensible when they operate as the evidentiary basis for consequential decisions. It develops a document-based comparative governance analysis of Saudi Arabia and Australia. Saudi Arabia is treated as the principal case; Australia is used as a functionally relevant comparator because Saudi external quality assurance has developed within a transnational field of standards-based accreditation and because TEQSA provides a developed example of risk-sensitive, standards-based and reviewable higher education regulation. The article argues that the unresolved governance issue is not whether accreditation should be legalised, but when a defect in an external review report becomes material enough to require correction. It proposes a corrective governance model centred on professional due care, materiality, evidence discipline, reasoned reporting, conflict control, institutional response and reviewability.</p>

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Professional Due Care and Material Defects in Academic Accreditation Review Reports: A Saudi–Australian Governance Analysis

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月23日

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  • Emad Ahmad Abousud

摘要

Academic accreditation is commonly described as a quality assurance process, yet its decisions may affect institutional reputation, programme continuity, student expectations and public confidence. This article examines how accreditation review reports can remain procedurally defensible when they operate as the evidentiary basis for consequential decisions. It develops a document-based comparative governance analysis of Saudi Arabia and Australia. Saudi Arabia is treated as the principal case; Australia is used as a functionally relevant comparator because Saudi external quality assurance has developed within a transnational field of standards-based accreditation and because TEQSA provides a developed example of risk-sensitive, standards-based and reviewable higher education regulation. The article argues that the unresolved governance issue is not whether accreditation should be legalised, but when a defect in an external review report becomes material enough to require correction. It proposes a corrective governance model centred on professional due care, materiality, evidence discipline, reasoned reporting, conflict control, institutional response and reviewability.