Accreditation, evaluation, and review in Australian programs: the end of the beginning?

The approaches to accreditation, evaluation and review, particularly in health services management education, in the U.S.A. and England are contrasted briefly. The Australian approaches, in first a binary system and then a unified national system, are described. Differences between the proposals in the Federal Policy Statement on higher education and actual practice in the establishment of accreditation as an external process with developmental objectives are analyzed. The introductory approach in developing a methodology for program self-review is outlined, as is the extensive but largely informal system of evaluation.