Criterion two. ASQ Higher Education Brief December 2011 (Vol. 4, No. 6)

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1 Changes in the Higher Learning Commission Accreditation Requirements: An Overview By Julie Furst-Bowe, Provost, University of Wisconsin-Stout The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) is an independent corporation and one of two commission members of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA). The NCA is one of six regional institutional accreditors in the United States. The HLC accredits degree-granting, post-secondary educational institutions in the north-central region of the country, a 19-state area that ranges from Michigan to New Mexico. In 2009, the HLC began a comprehensive review of its traditional accreditation criteria. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education required the HLC to define minimum expectations relative to each of the criteria. In the spring of 2011, an alpha version of the new criteria was made available, along with the current minimum expectations within the criteria. Overall, although there are no significant changes in the nature of the accreditation requirements, the new documents provide greater clarity and direction for institutions, reviewers and others involved in the accreditation process. The revised criteria should also lead to improvements in assessment, accountability and transparency. Criterion one Criterion one continues to focus on institutional mission. The core components of the revised criterion one include: Understanding and support of the mission. Recognition of diversity. Service to constituencies. In today s fiscally challenged environment, it is essential that an institution fully comprehend its mission and align its programs, services, workforce and resources in fulfillment of its mission, goals and priorities. An institution s commitment to diversity and knowledge of its role in a multicultural society are also essential in the current global economy. An inclusive

2 campus enriches the educational experience by exposing students to a variety of cultures and perspectives, and by promoting student awareness, growth and development. It is also important for an institution to identify its key constituencies and stakeholder groups, and develop systematic methods for determining the needs of each group, engaging with and responding to each group in an appropriate manner. Few institutions, however, have developed truly systematic approaches to assessing constituent and community needs. Even institutions that conduct formal needs assessments are often slow to respond to emerging stakeholder and community needs due to several factors, from a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities to competing priorities. This is an area where most institutions could benefit from additional assistance and training because they like all institutions need to demonstrate their value in this area not only for accreditation purposes, but also to garner and maintain community support. The final part of the third core component asks the institution to demonstrate that it serves society through the transmission, discovery, creation and application of knowledge, and that it recognizes the value of its publicly available resources. This appears to be an area of growth at most universities, as more faculty and students are engaging in research, creative and scholarly activities. However, it is important that this criterion be interpreted broadly to meet the needs of two-year colleges, technical colleges and other institutions whose missions do not include traditional research and scholarship. Criterion two Criterion two involves integrity and requires that the institutions endeavors be characterized by the highest ethical standards. The first core component states that institutions must present themselves including their programs, services, costs and accreditation relationships clearly and completely to the public. This appears to be a very straightforward requirement. But providing this required information in an accessible and understandable format is extremely important in a time of steadily increasing tuition, including additional tuition and fees for specific academic programs and online programs. The second core component states that an institution must establish and follow policies relative to carrying out its academic, financial and auxiliary functions in an ethical manner.

3 The third core component includes several characteristics of the governing board of the institution, including autonomy, a commitment to broad public interests, a commitment to longterm sustainability for the institution and an understanding of the needs of the institution s constituencies. Finally, there should be an appropriate separation of roles for the governing board and the administration. These characteristics all appear to be best practices for governing boards operating in any sector. The fourth core component states that an institution must provide clear information regarding its procedures for receiving and responding to complaints from students, employees and other stakeholder groups. Although most institutions would have this information available on its website or in its handbook, few institutions have implemented comprehensive complaint management systems. Many institutions continue to have difficulty distinguishing informal and formal complaints, documenting complaints in a consistent manner and demonstrating that complaints are resolved within a specific time period. Even more importantly, it is not clear that senior leaders review complaints on a regular basis to examine patterns, identify trends or develop campus wide solutions to common issues. Criterion three Criterion three deals with the institution s resources and its processes for planning, evaluation and continuous improvement. The first core component includes several direct statements about the resource base relative to financial resources, personnel (including faculty), and physical and technical infrastructure. The second core component deals with governance and the administrative structure with regard to leadership and collaborative processes, and calls for appropriate engagement of internal constituencies including administration, faculty, staff and students, in planning processes. The third core component requires the institution to review institutional performance measures as part of the improvement process. The fourth core component calls for the allocation of resources to align with the institution s mission. Finally, the fifth core component requires the institution to engage in long-range planning, including:

4 A shared understanding of institutional capacity. Planning that considers key factors, including demographics. Emerging technologies and globalization. Planning that addresses the impact of enrollment and economic fluctuations. Planning at all levels. Over the years, planning in higher education has evolved. Most institutions have developed campus wide strategic plans, IT plans and facilities plans. But these plans often are not integrated and fail to consider shortfalls in enrollment or funding that may result in modification of current plans. For example, deployment of IT plans and capital plans are currently on hold at many public institutions due to reductions in state funding. It is difficult to know how the lack of action plan deployment will affect an institution s ability to fulfill its mission. In addition, changes in top leadership positions tend to significantly affect plans and planning processes. Faculty, staff, students and other stakeholders often have token roles in these processes, and comprehensive planning tends to be much less common at levels below the institutional level at the college, school or academic department levels. Although most schools have developed some type of plan-do-check-act process for planning and assessment at the institutional level, it is rare to see consistent improvement in key performance measures. From the criteria, it s difficult to assess how much actual improvement is expected or required on an annual basis, or even from one decade to the next. An institution can have state-of-the art planning and assessment processes that address each of the core components, yet could remain average, or even below average in its performance outcomes. Criterion four Criterion four requires the institution to provide evidence of student learning and teaching effectiveness in fulfillment of its educational mission. The first core component requires the goals for student learning to be clearly stated and that processes for assessment to be implemented for all academic offerings. An institution must have the capacity to conduct assessment of student learning, solid assessment processes and methods, and accurate

5 reporting of assessment results, and must use the information gained from assessment methods to improve student learning. Similar to planning, the ability of institutions to meet these criteria has shown consistent improvement over the past decade. But the quality of assessment work often varies considerably between academic disciplines, department and programs. Academic programs that maintain specialized accreditations, such as teacher education and engineering, are often much more advanced than areas that lack specific accreditation standards. Another common issue across all academic disciplines is not using assessment data to make meaningful improvement in teaching and learning processes. Institutions are collecting more data than ever. Yet, using these data to make informed decisions relative to teaching and learning methods, course content, course sequencing or instructional delivery strategies appears to remain a challenge for many colleges and universities. Including a specific requirement to document improvements should help institutions become rigorous in their assessment efforts. The second core component requires institutions to state appropriate goals for student retention and graduation. Institutions must collect information on student retention and completion, analyze information and use the results of the analysis to address deficiencies and develop improvement actions. Improving retention rates and producing more college graduates has been named as a top priority in many states, and most institutions take this initiative very seriously. It is important to realize that retention and graduation rates will vary depending on the demographics of the student population and nature of the program. But institutions that serve primarily disadvantaged or part-time students may need to make significant changes from increasing financial support to providing opportunities for accelerated degree programs to graduate an acceptable percentage of students in a reasonable time period. The third core component deals with institutional support for effective teaching and requires faculty to have appropriate qualifications, current knowledge in their disciplines and regular processes for faculty evaluation. The fourth core component ensures effective learning

6 environments regardless of instructional delivery method, including processes for placing students in appropriate courses and programs, and student access to faculty members, advisement and other support services. Finally, the fifth core component requires the institution s academic resources to support student learning and effective teaching, regardless of instructional delivery method. Criterion five Criterion five requires the institution to offer programs of substance, rigor and relevance that are appropriate to its mission. There are five core components in this category. The first component requires the institution to demonstrate that it values a life of learning. This concept is demonstrated through the implementation of freedom of inquiry statements for faculty, staff and students; the creation of knowledge and production of scholarship; the use of research and scholarship for educational improvement; and the support of professional development opportunities for staff. The second core component requires that all courses and programs be rigorous, current and relevant, and that the content and rigor of programs are equal, regardless of instructional delivery method. Institutions must differentiate learning goals for undergraduate, graduate and post-baccalaureate programs, and institutional structures must reflect an appropriate balance of centralized and distributed academic coordination. It can, however, be challenging to assess the currency, rigor and relevancy of programs that lack discipline-specific accreditations. Without such program standards, these concepts can be somewhat subjective. General education is the focus of the third core component, and there are requirements for clear learning goals, as well as specific knowledge and skills requirements. The fourth component deals with program evaluation and includes statements on credit that appear on transcripts, including: Transfer credit and credit for prior learning. The need for regular reviews for academic programs. The need to demonstrate that students are prepared for employment or further study when they have completed their programs.

7 The core components in criterion five are straightforward, and much of this documentation is also essential to meet the U.S. Department of Education s program integrity requirements. Overall, the proposed criteria, along with the minimum expectations document, are a substantial improvement over the current criteria. While the majority of the requirements remain the same, they are organized in a more cohesive manner. There appears to be less repetition among the criteria, and the greater detail and specificity provided in many areas will be extremely beneficial to institutions. These changes should lead to greater transparency, accountability and consistency with federal reporting requirements. These documents provide the additional information needed to avoid confusion or misinterpretation of the criteria. Yet, the language and tone are not prescriptive, and these criteria can be used successfully with a wide range of higher education institutions. The beta version of the proposed criteria can be found at Julie Furst-Bowe is provost and vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, WI. She has a doctorate in education from the University of Minnesota and has served as a peer reviewer, presenter, facilitator and panelist for the Higher Learning Commission for more than a decade.