Stakeholder prioritization in higher education accreditation in the UAE context: a multi-criteria analysis using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Purpose This study compares how students, faculty, administrators and employers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) prioritize key higher education accreditation criteria to inform more stakeholder-responsive quality assurance. Design/methodology/approach Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) pairwise comparisons, data from 240 participants across four accredited UAE Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) were analyzed across five criteria; only consistent judgments (Consistency Ratio = 0.10) were retained to compute priority weights. Findings Faculty prioritized teaching quality (0.418), students prioritized student support services (0.381), administrators assigned their highest weight to teaching quality (0.310), followed by employability outcomes (0.247) and employers assigned equal highest weights to teaching quality and continuous improvement (0.248 each). Research limitations/implications This study is limited by its use of purposive sampling across four UAE institutions and a restricted set of accreditation criteria, which may constrain generalizability. Despite this, the findings offer clear practical implications by demonstrating how stakeholder-weighted priorities can guide more targeted, transparent and outcome-oriented accreditation policies and resource allocation. Practical implications The findings help institutions and accreditation bodies align evaluation criteria and resources with stakeholder priorities, strengthening teaching quality, student support, employability outcomes and continuous improvement within outcome-based accreditation frameworks. Social implications Embedding stakeholder priorities in accreditation supports more inclusive and transparent quality assurance, improving graduate readiness, public trust and the societal value of higher education. Originality/value This study contributes to the limited literature applying AHP to stakeholder prioritization of higher education accreditation criteria in the UAE. It provides a data-driven basis for aligning accreditation criteria with stakeholder expectations and supports the shift from compliance-based evaluation to stakeholder-informed, outcome-oriented quality assurance.