Browsing by Author "Barroilhet, Agustin"

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    Modeling appeals in university accreditation in Chile: an exploratory study
    (2024) Barroilhet, Agustin; Silva, Monica; Quiroga, Bernardo F.
    In Chile, university administrators may appeal to a secondary agency to challenge the accreditation decisions of the primary national accreditation agency. The study analyzes the appeal judgments, using an empirical approach to identify arguments used by the secondary agency to justify its decisions. The analyses identify several factors, such as improvements since the last accreditation, faculty productivity, and financial standing, as the most relevant predictors of appeal success. The appellate agency, however, tends to emphasize the absence of deficiencies or weaknesses associated with these factors when it grants an appeal, sidestepping the primary agency's criteria and standards for accreditation. Such an approach may be appropriate given the heterogeneous landscape of the Chilean higher education system, providing leeway to drive excellence in more selective institutions while maintaining some minimum standards in less selective ones.
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    The Right to be Fairly Assessed
    (2024) Barroilhet, Agustin; Silva, Monica; Geisinger, Kurt F.
    Merit-based procedures should be constantly reevaluated according to the circumstances to remain both valid and fair-two interrelated concepts. Inducing reevaluation, however, is difficult. These procedures are controlled by legitimate authorities, are rule and contract-bound, and can become quickly entrenched. This resistance to change calls for specific legal tools and institutions that can favour a potential review. This article advances the first of these tools: enacting the right to be fairly assessed. With this aim, we first explain why challenges to merit-based procedures are complex and then provide contingent justifications to base potential challenges. Our concern is the role of biases and conflicts of interests of authorities who define and control merit-based procedures. We then turn our focus to the institutional aspects of the problem. Administrative alternatives to induce reevaluation involve complex challenges, hence our defence of an actionable legal right. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach by showing how courts enforce fairness in testing in the USA. The need for the right to be both validly and fairly assessed is based on Chilean examples. Still, our argument also applies to other nations lacking equitable remedies and actions to deal with the same issues.