Peer review and the dilemmas of quality control in programme accreditation in South African higher education: Challenges and possibilities

The paper scrutinises the dynamics and the nature of peer review in the programme evaluation and accreditation process within the context of diverse individual and institutional legacies in South Africa. It analyses the peer review process and highlights the contestation at political, policy and epistemological levels. The paper argues that, although the diversity of the review teams very often led to consensus based more on political compromises than on sound professional and academic grounds, all participants experienced the process as educative offering conceptual and practical opportunities for development. It points to the need for problematisation of peer review and for a critical examination of its possibilities and limits in programme review.