Spanish students report limited perceived impact from accreditation

Updated Sep 07, 2026

Students may not experience accreditation as a visible improvement in their degree. Begoña García-Domingo, Carmen López-Escribano and Jesús M. Rodríguez-Mantilla examine these perceptions in Spanish universities.

What the survey found

The study included 1,562 students. Overall perceived impact on degree organisation and management was low to moderate: 50.9% rated it very low or low, 35.2% medium and 13.9% high.

The abstract reports more positive evaluations among students with greater knowledge of accreditation processes, alongside contextual differences. This is an association in students’ accounts. It does not show that informing students causes better accreditation outcomes, or establish whether a particular programme objectively improved.

Accessible publisher methods and descriptive results support the retained findings. Full subgroup tables were not retrieved, so this summary does not repeat earlier detailed claims about the effects of student representation. The Spanish accreditation context also limits direct application to other systems.

Questions for quality teams

As editorial suggestions, ask students whether they understand how review works and whether they can identify resulting changes. Examine both delivery and communication rather than assuming that low confidence is simply a visibility problem.

Show how evidence informed a decision, including where requested changes were not possible. Support representatives to understand and explain the process, while also hearing from students who do not participate in committees. Evaluate whether changes improve the experience itself, as well as awareness of the process.

Reference

Begoña García-Domingo, Carmen López-Escribano and Jesús M. Rodríguez-Mantilla. “Accreditation processes and their impact on improvements in the organisation and management of Spanish university degrees: student assessment.” Quality in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/13538322.2025.2576322.

Corrected 7 September 2026: the previous summary gave the wrong sample of 440 and incorrectly described predominantly medium-to-high impact. The paper reports 1,562 students and generally limited perceived impact. This is a limited-access review.