The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) successfully received international institutional accreditation by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in the United Kingdom after completing its International Quality Review (IQR).

DI is the first academic institution in Qatar to have a successful international accreditation review by the QAA and without any conditions. The QAA identified eight areas of good practice at DI. These include, but are not limited to, the broader socio-cultural impact of DI’s offered programs in Qatar and Arab region; the strategic and substantial investment in human capital ensuring student-centered teaching and learning; responsive and accessible support offered to students, including specialist support; extensive range of learning resources with high-quality physical environment; the agile approach to student feedback and supporting students to publish in high-quality journals.

Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, President of DI, has expressed his pride in this achievement and his appreciation for the valuable contribution of the DI community, professors, administrators and students, and described this as a successful culmination of a process that began in the Fall of 2017.

Dr. El-Affendi added that “DI is pleased with this result, which was not surprising as the Institute's mission has emphasized, since its inception, its commitment to the highest international standards, as well as its serious contribution to reformulating these standards. DI has already obtained international accreditation for many of its programs, and has signed partnerships with a number of many prominent universities in the world; its graduates have been accepted for PhD programs in many of them.”

DI chose the QAA, which works with universities in the UK to assure quality, after careful consideration of all the available options. QAA is one of the world’s leading experts in quality assurance for higher education. QAA’s IQR is a process which evaluates the efficacy and adequacy of an educational institution’s quality assurance system in accordance with the 10 "European Standards and Guidelines (ESG)" in the European Higher Education Area. The ESGs focus is on, but are not limited to, program design and review, teaching, learning and assessment, learning resources and student support, information management, and quality assurance. DI has met all 10 ESG standards, adhering fully to international benchmarking and quality assurance as per the QAA IQR report.

DI has applied for accreditation and submitted the necessary documentation to the QAA in Spring of 2021. This was followed by a virtual scoping visit of a team of experts from the QAA, after which it was decided that DI has met the needed conditions to progress to the next stage, the institutional review. In March 2022, DI submitted a self-study supported by documents on the Institute's compliance with the 10 ESG standards . Accordingly, another team from the QAA conducted a field visit in August 2022 at DI, during which it was ensured that DI meets the standards in all aspects of the educational process. QAA made its final decision on 12, December 2022 after reviewing the working group's report (which is published in full on the QAA website, and DI was officially notified of the decision on February 9 of this year.

The DI President added that the Institute will continue to enhance performance in all areas, especially in the field of research and knowledge production, including extensive publishing in Arabic, in cooperation with the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. At the same time its faculty, (a number of its students and graduates, with faculty assistance), continue to publish in the most prominent publishing platforms globally, a point which was also praised in the QAA IQR report.