Advanced orthodontic education: evolution of assessment criteria and methods to meet future challenges.

The achievement of academic and research institutes has increasingly become the subject of ranking by independent organizations. This trend has educational and economic implications, which may pertain to attracting students and endowments as well as allocating of funds to specific educational components. The aims of this article were to discuss the reliability and soundness of the existing academic ranking methods and to propose guidelines for the quantitative assessment of advanced orthodontic programs. This criteria-driven assessment assigns weight factors for the basic components of orthodontic education and provides a template for clarifying the standing of programs. Moreover, a combination of program and individual assessment is proposed to monitor the implementation of educational criteria and assess their effectiveness.