Beyond Borders: What Global Accreditation Teaches Us About Program Governance

When international credentialing organizations negotiate mutual recognition agreements, they don't just compare course catalogs. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's (ASHA) agreement with counterparts from Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland examined "educational and other requirements expected of each other's certificate holders, including academic course content, the amount and distribution of clinical practice hours prior to certification being awarded, degree designations, accreditation of academic programs, experience, and assessment mechanisms" (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, n.d.). This deep dive reveals international accreditation's lesson for governance: it forces us to distinguish between essential standards and inherited assumptions.