Rationalise and recognise various industry, vocational, and academic; qualifications within a coherent system;
	Protect public interest through a quality assurance framework;
	Support flexible and continuous upgrading of knowledge and skills through life-long learning; and
	Provide a framework for private education providers to demonstrate credibility and quality.
In addition, they guarantee the quality of their accreditation process through the following set of policies:
	Qualifications recognised through the MNQF must meet or exceed specified quality benchmarks.
	A course leading to a qualification in the MNQF must meet the Pre-Qualifying Criteria (PQC), which sets the minimum quality standards acceptable to the Maldives Accreditation Board.
	It is mandatory for Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees to undergo accreditation.

In spite of their determination to make the system an effective one there are lots of challenges and barriers they still need to overcome. Currently they are understaffed and possess very limited resources; they do not even have a proper Internet connection. At MAB the contents of the courses or programs are assessed by a panel of no more than 14 people at a sitting. These people are employed by other organisations and institutions, public as well as private. Each sitting have to be arranged according to their time convenience and availability. Not just that, over the past couple of years there have been three different executives to lead the institution.

They also usually run into many problems in the process of accrediting qualifications issued by colleges or universities that are not well known to the international community. Sometimes it even becomes almost impossible, according to an official of MAB, to attest whether a particular academic institution really exist due to limited information on the Internet and publications. Nevertheless, it will be illogical to turn down qualifications issued by an academic institution just because they do not have a web presence. Yet, this is a common practice. As a logical solution to this problem the official further commends that he wishes to see one day their officials visiting such institutions abroad and verify in person under such special circumstances. Currently this has not been possible due to financial constraints.

Given this fact, at present they attest foreign academic institutions by two methods: checking whether an institution is acceptable to other national accreditation bodies and the extent to which it is recognised by their respective governments. Subsequently, on a regular basis, they issue public announcements reminding prospect students to verify whether the college or university is internationally recognised prior to enrolment. Perhaps this is not a very good practice since they are limiting themselves to only these two criteria since there are many countries in Asia, which do not have their own national accreditation bodies. The other reason being Internet is costly and uncommon in most parts of the Asia and Pacific.

As globalisation is taking place at a rapid speed making the world a smaller place, importance of being a part of the global community and adopting an international accreditation system becomes paramount. It is widely believed by concerned authorities, including academic institutions and MAB, that there may be several benefits for Maldives by becoming a member of APACC. Some of these include:

	The learners will benefit when they obtain qualifications that are
		Recognised by employers, educational institutions regionally, internationally.
		Transferable (sometimes subject to get an extension) for other courses the learner may take in the future.
		Able to provide greater choice and flexibility in what, where and how to learn.
	The employers will benefit with assurance of quality of qualifications, Education and training that are relevant to the country/ industry, increased availability skilled and adaptable employees.
	The course providers will benefit by being able to validate the quality of their courses and certificates, Offer standards- based training with measurable outcomes, provide certificates for nationally recognised and internationally recognised qualifications, transfer academic credits between qualifications and institutions, expand the range of programs offered and finally benefit from external monitoring by external international verifiers that leads to quality improvement.

3 PRESSING PROBLEMS IN ACQUIRING INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL ACCREDITATION AND CERTIFICATION


MCHE's mission has been to make its courses and programs acceptable not only in the country, but internationally as well. This is because doing so will not only help their students obtain exemptions from similar courses run by institutions abroad, but enabling them to save their time as they climb up the ladder of higher education and training, as they obtain one qualification and wish to proceed with an advanced course. It is important for MCHE to accredit its programs, both internationally and regionally to keep pace with the international globalization. And above all to fulfill its dream on the requirements and desire to open the country's first university by the end of year 2005

With this in mind MCHE try to collaborate with different universities and academic institutions abroad and has been successful in some disciplines such as law, tourism studies and management. However, there are many more barriers in making their local programs acceptable to institutions abroad, particularly that of vocational nature. The challenges and barriers for MCHE to accredit its programs internationally or regionally are constraints of supply like quality of entrants, lack of qualified staff due to financial constraints, lack of part-time short courses, limited training facilities and premature monitoring and evaluation.


4 RECOMMENDATIONS IN RELATION TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ACCREDITATION AND CERTIFICATION BODY FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC REGION


Maldives College of Higher Education intends to serve people and society to maintain, increase and diffuse the knowledge useful for the community by educating responsible committed citizens to participate in solving island, national and regional problems and to preserve and assert cultural identity.

Having studied the Guidelines and Policies of the commission, the following are some recommendations to make APACC a better one:

	It is desirable for APACC to collaborate with other international accreditation bodies such as International Accreditation Forum (IFA) and European Co-operation for Accreditation (EA), which are acceptable to most European and Western countries since countries like Maldives adopts an English Education System.
	APACC should ensure that member countries have in place effective complaints procedures to ensure that all complaints that are made to their respective national accreditation bodies are thoroughly investigated and corrective action taken.
	APACC should recognize that its own complaints procedure and the complaints procedures of its members and their accredited bodies can only deal effectively with inappropriate behavior when it is reported to them and evidence sufficient to justify action is provided.
	Even though the APACC recognizes the responsibilities of the government and the concerned ministry for the ultimate legal authority and decision making of the institutions, the commission should take seriously any issues of complaints raised with them and address these to the ultimate governmental authorities of the concerned countries.

5 CONCLUSIONS


Even though Maldives has a national accreditation body, which is determined and working in the right direction with relevant guidelines and policies in place, there are still many more areas of improvements such as management and human resources.
Most of the programs offered by Maldives College of Higher Education are only recognised nationally and has aspirations of going global.

Maldivian Accreditation Board as well as MCHE and other Technical Vocational Institutions are eager and look forward to Maldives becoming a member of a regional accreditation system such as APACC.


REFERENCES

1. Maldives Accreditation Board http://www.moe.gov.mv/mab/
2. Maldives National Qualifications Framework, 2001
3. Ministry of Education http://www.moe.edu.mv
4. Ministry of Planning and National Development