By Douglas A Wymer, Ph.D.
The second draft of the proposed Principles of Accreditation is out and it does not disappoint. I stand by my original statement that there is a lot to like in the new standards. I was recently at the SACCR annual meeting and did a presentation focused on the first draft and started that presentation with, “Everything I say might be wrong.” As it turns out, many of the areas of concern I brought up to my audience have been resolved in the second draft; however, others have arisen. Over the next little while I will write about specific elements of the new draft.
The first noteworthy change from the first to the second draft is to standard 5 (Sound Institutional Planning).
5. Sound Institutional Planning. The institution demonstrates systematic, integrated, and data-informed multi-year planning to enhance institutional effectiveness and ensure long-term sustainability and mission fulfillment. Planning includes (a) an approved plan with clearly articulated goals consistent with the institution’s mission, (b) a regular review of the plan to determine the institution’s progress toward attainment of its goals, (c) a deliberate connection between the plan and an institutional financial plan grounded in realistic and clearly documented revenue and expenditure assumptions, and (d) engagement with appropriate stakeholders.
The adjective “multi-year” has been added to systematic, integrated, and data-informed to describe the institution’s planning process. This is a good change because one year of planning does not make for sound planning.
However, an important piece of the first-draft standard has been removed. In the first draft the planning process was to occur at strategic operational levels. The new draft appears to be exclusively focused on the institutional strategic plan. Why is this a problem? Many institutions build the strategic plan around various strategies to achieve the mission, and execute those strategies in a data-informed planning process that includes specific projects with measurable goals that are documented in annual planning reports from individual campus units. This new version of standard 5 has become very prescriptive with phrases like, “…an approved plan…” and two instances of “…the plan…”. Both indicate one and only one source of information can be used to indicate sound institutional planning. Institutions may not be free to execute and document attainment of strategic plan elements through what used to be the 7.3/8.2.c planning and evaluation process. Rather, this new standard appears to rigidly require one fully self-contained plan. I don’t think this is a good change. It could lead to inflexible strategic plans that cannot adapt or will be slow to adapt to changing circumstances.
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