Two months ago I promised to get started on this series, but we all got distracted by, well, something. As we get deeper into the standards we won’t combine quite so many sections into one post, but these first four are easily handled together.
Section 1 (Integrity): Proscriptive. You either act with integrity or you don’t. The expectation is that you do, in all things.
Section 2 (Mission): Permissive. You have to have a mission, but beyond that the sky is the limit. I have seen mission statements that were one sentence long. I have seen mission statements of more than a page. Generally, the shorter the better. If it gets too short, you may need to lump a few things together and always refer to mission, vision, and values as one lump. I worked for an institution that had a mission like this. Alone it was nearly useless, but coupled with the vision and value statements the three formed a solid governing document. Accreditation writers at that institution were instructed to never refer to the mission by itself.
Section 3 (Basic eligibility standard): Proscriptive. Talk about a useless section of the Principles of Accreditation. Most institutions don’t need to write anything for 3.1.a or 3.1.b. The instructions are so poor for 3.1.c that it should be thrown out on general principle. This could be replaced by a checklist on the Institutional Summary Form. Have there been any changes to your degree-granting authority since your last review? Do you offer all coursework for at least one degree program at all degree levels you offer? Do you have students? Yes this needs to remain part of the application for accreditation, but when going through reaffirmation, if you spend more than two minutes here you are wasting time better spent elsewhere.
Section 4 (Governing Board): Mostly Proscriptive. The proscriptive nature of these standards is important to protect an institution from a Board who meddles in the day-to-day operations of an institution or is otherwise broken. These are primarily focused on the duties of the Board. Set the mission, hire the president, evaluate the president, fire the president, and monitor the financial health of the institution. Remember through these standards that “regularly” means at least every three years and citing policy is useless without evidence documenting that the Board follows the policy.