On 24 and 25 March 2022, the IMARC programme was visited by a committee of the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO) for an audit of our two-year International Master's of Advanced Research in Criminology (IMARC). Such audits usually take place every six years. They are mandatory for every programme in higher education that wants to receive formal recognition (and funding) from the Ministry of Education and Sciences. THE NVAO is hence allowed to award legally recognised diplomas.
Today we have received the final assessment report established by the assessment panel with a positive assessment according to the European Approach framework for the International Master of Science in Advanced Research in Criminology: border crossing, security and social justice (IMARC).
"Although this is only the third year IMARC has been running, we needed to be accredited at this early stage because till now, IMARC's diplomas were validated based on the accredited Dutch-lingual one-year master's programmes of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Ghent University and an internal accreditation of the University of Kent. Since a two-year master's is different from a one-year master's, NVAO felt it necessary to audit IMARC now, even though the programme just started.
The Belgian branch of NVAO carried out this European Approach accreditation process. Next to representatives of NVAO, the committee was composed of scholars from England, Belgium/Italy and the Netherlands/Belgium. The committee interviewed the IMARC management, support staff from the consortium's universities, lecturers, students, alumni, and network partners where IMARC students have done internships."
The multicultural and international composition
The most unique features of IMARC the committee identified were the truly international and multicultural composition of the different cohorts of students, the diverse disciplinary background of the IMARC students, the training in presentation skills, the ability for students to present their work and receive peer as well as staff feedback from fifteen universities at common sessions, the direct relationships with network partners from the working field, who have demonstrated a strong commitment to the programme, and wish to be involved more actively again – after a period of relative silence due to Covid, the fact that students were keen about doing research, have a full year to carry that out, and were overall happy with the support they received from IMARC staff, the fact that members of staff also seem enthusiastic about the programme, and the appreciation of students and alumni for the contacts with the coordinators and practical points of contact in each of the institutions.
Room for improvement
The committee also saw several challenges for IMARC as a programme: the committee felt that our Self Evaluation Report (initially) contained too little reflection on the programme as a whole and paid too little attention to the operationalisation of IMARC's key themes – Border Crossing, Security and Social Justice – in concrete learning outcomes of the programme and learning goals of the different modules. An additional matrix of learning goals and outcomes that was made but was initially not sent to the committee was added to the NVAO documentation on Thursday evening. A separate reflection on the programme was prepared on Thursday and sent to the committee early Friday morning. Both documents were welcomed and taken into consideration in the audit - and they are available for you on request. The withdrawal of the University of Kent, and the (probable) entry of the universities of Málaga and Malta, probably require a more formal governance mechanism. The formal title International Master's of Advanced Research in Criminology and the more content-oriented sub-title Border Crossing, Security and Social Justice need to be explained better. There is a concern about the significant differences in methodological skills of entering IMARC students and the limited possibilities to bridge this gap during the programme. Whilst the committee acknowledges that a focus on methodological skills inevitably leads to a North-West European and North American bias in the recruitment of students (IMARC is by no means unique in this), there should be an offer of means to compensate for possible methodological shortcomings before students enter the programme: either by MOOC's, readings-lists, summer courses, etc. Students' qualitative research skills during IMARC seem more up to par. Still, concerning quantitative methods, the committee has its doubts. Since policy research is predominantly quantitatively oriented, the minimum criteria for IMARC's learning goals should be that students gain knowledge about and assess quantitative datasets on migration, cybercrime, organised crime, etc. Lastly, the committee advises the IMARC management to provide more concrete career advice to its students and alumni.