Are Accreditors Failing Students?
This seems to be a common claim from today’s USDOE, citing poor oversight of quality and outcomes, misplaced focus on non-core metrics, the cost of the accreditation process, and permitting institutions to offer failing programs. Let’s unpack each of these over the next few posts. First, poor oversight of quality and outcomes. A focus on…
Program Outcomes vs. Program Student Learning Outcomes
Sometimes faculty, program managers, and department chairs don’t understand the difference between these two very different types of outcomes. Nobody’s fault really, but knowing the distinction and knowing how to teach faculty about the differences is critical to an easier path to making a compelling case for compliance with a number of standards. First, Student…
Let’s Talk About Online Platforms
As a teacher and then as an administrator I had worked with a few online platforms before I started consulting full-time early in 2020. You know these, they help manage the reporting on assessing student attainment of learning outcomes and administrative outcomes, they provide a template for your accreditation reports, and they may help manage…
How Difficult is Accreditation?
I was recently having a conversation with an institution President and a member of that institution’s Board and the President indicated that a reaffirmation “brings an institution to its knees.” I have thought about that statement quite a bit since then and, though I did not voice it then, I stick with my first thought…
Where will accreditation go next?
Well, we got through SACSCOC Section 6 in the “Permissive or Proscriptive” series and then we got Dr. Pruitt’s First 100 Day Plan presentation and it does not seem to be worth the time to continue the series. This is probably a good thing. To quote one of my favorite songs, “We can all use…
Proscriptive or permissive? SACSCOC Section 6
There is a bunch to unpack in the faculty standards and these usually represent quite a challenge for institutions as the case for compliance is built. Let’s look at these one by one. 6.1 Full-time faculty–This core requirement is focused on the institution’s mission and needs a narrative that shows that the institution has enough…
Proscriptive or Permissive? SACSCOC Section 5
Getting back to this series, until our next interruption. Section 5 is focused on how an institution is assembled and how the executive leadership is structured. 5.1 (Chief Executive Officer): Proscriptive. Each institution needs a CEO who’s primary duty is to further the mission and objectives of the institution. There is room for some creativity…
A New Accreditor in the East?
It seems that the permissive/proscriptive walk through the SACSCOC standards will be interrupted again as we unpack what little has been shared about the efforts of the University Systems of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee to form a new accreditor. Note that this list of systems comes from Inside Higher Ed. The…
Proscriptive or Permissive? SACSCOC sections 1-4
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…
Executive Order 14279
So the last entry promised a section-by-section look at the SACSCOC Principles of Accreditation focusing on proscriptive and flexible elements. I’ll get to that, but it is timely to look at Executive Order 14279 Reforming Accreditation To Strengthen Higher Education. Many smart people have written about this so I will add my voice for those…
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