The documentation serves as a guide for South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) programme reviews and it provides information for institutions and reviewers regarding their roles, responsibilities, processes and documentation as they carry out reviews for:

• BSc Computer Science degree programmes;
• BCom IS degree programmes;
• IT degree programmes; and
• Diploma programmes.

These programme accreditation criteria are generic and are applied to the different programmes with reference to the relevant standards (ACM and IEEE) and by using peer judgement. The standards applicable to each type of programme are identified in Document SACAB Guidelines for submissions.

Accreditation criteria are defined for three stages in the lifecycle of a programme.

• The criteria that must be satisfied by an existing programme that has produced a cohort of graduates;
• The criteria for an already implemented programme that has not yet produced graduates but has students who have completed half the credits toward the qualification; and
• The criteria are applied to a proposed new programme. Proposed and newly developed programmes must be planned to meet the SACAB accreditation criteria.

The SACAB Degree and Diploma Accreditation Document Set consists of the following six documents:

1. SACAB General information (Doc 1: This document)
2. SACAB Administrative Guidelines (Doc 2)
3. SACAB Application Guidelines (Doc 3)
4. SACAB Guidelines for Submissions (Doc 4)
5. SACAB Submission Forms (Doc 5)
6. SACAB Diploma Programme Criteria for Comprehensive Universities (Doc 6).