Present challenges in education have enforced a need for accreditation or similar quality assurance systems of education. The concept of accreditation is used in various ways in higher education. One problem in establishing accreditation systems is the risk of bureaucracy and resource demands. One perspective of the TUMS programmatic accreditation will be to investigate possibilities of developing less bureaucratic but still reliable accreditation procedures.

Main elements in the process of accreditation

The World Health Organization (WHO) and World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) Guidelines state that for accreditation of education the process should include the following stages:

• Institutional self-evaluation of the medical school
• External evaluation based on the report of self-evaluation and a site visit
• Final report by the review team containing recommendations regarding the decision on accreditation
• Decision on accreditation.

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The Guidelines also include recommendations regarding accreditation systems:

• Fundamental requirements
• Legal framework
• Organizational structure
• Standards or criteria to be used
• Needs for public announcement of decisions and
• Benefits of accreditation

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As the first step for the TUMS program accreditation, TUMS has underwent the institutional accreditation and seeks to go further steps to provide program accreditation for the offered programs.