The Accreditation Paradox
This week, India's higher education regulator instructed universities to stop treating online learning as an optional add-on and begin embedding Massive Open Online Courses directly into degree programmes. It is a practical policy decision with strategic implications.
Every week brings a similar announcement from somewhere in the world.
A university launches an AI strategy. Another redesigns its curriculum. A business school repositions its portfolio. An institution adopts a new governance model, opens a campus abroad or prepares for its next accreditation review.
Individually, these decisions seem incremental. Collectively, they raise a much older question.
More than 2,000 years ago, in his Life of Theseus, the Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch described a paradox that continues to challenge leaders today.
If every plank of a ship is gradually replaced, is it still the same ship? The thought experiment became known as the Ship of Theseus.
It has surprisingly little to do with ships. It has everything to do with institutions. Universities are replacing their planks faster than ever before.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping teaching, assessment, research and administration. Student expectations continue to evolve. New disciplines are emerging. Partnerships are expanding across borders. Governance is adapting to new realities.
According to UNESCO, global tertiary enrolment has grown from around 100 million students in 2000 to more than 250 million today. Institutions are simultaneously being asked to demonstrate greater quality, relevance, employability and societal impact.
Transformation is no longer a strategic initiative. It is a permanent condition. Accreditation sits at the centre of this paradox.
Too often, it is misunderstood as a process designed to preserve the status quo. The best accreditation systems do something far more valuable. They provide confidence that institutions can evolve without compromising academic quality, integrity or purpose. They recognise that excellence is not measured by resisting change. It is measured by leading it responsibly.
History rarely rewards institutions that refuse to change. Nor does it reward those that change without direction.
The institutions that endure understand the difference. They replace the planks. They strengthen the mission. Perhaps that is the real lesson of the Ship of Theseus.
The paradox was never really about the ship. It was about identity.
Every accreditation review, every strategic plan and every institutional transformation asks the same question Plutarch posed more than two millennia ago.
If everything changes, what remains? The answer is not the curriculum. Not the technology. Not the organisational chart. It is the institution's purpose.
The universities that will matter most in the decades ahead will not be those that preserve every plank.
They will be those whose purpose remains unmistakable, no matter how many times the ship is rebuilt.
