UNIVERSITY ACCREDITATION- BETWEEN CONSUMER PROTECTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION PROVIDERS

University accreditation is also an important mechanism for protecting the consumers of higher education, as well as an accountability factor to higher education providers. In Romania, the quality assurance system has exercised pressures towards the homogenization of higher education. By the nature of standards and quality indicators used, but also by his philosophy, quality assurance has encouraged higher education institutions to comply, both in content and in the processes of relatively rigid institutional models or prototypes. The institutions which removed themselves from these models and from the associated standards have been penalized.