Alternative Model of Higher Education Accreditation

Processes vs Outcome

Accreditors tend to be descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive, but to really get at these two basic issues:

• Do graduates have the skills to find and hold a job
• Does the institution have the resources to sustain its mission.

Before we delve into these questions, let us look at standards from two accreditation commissions: Middle States Committee on Higher Education (MSCHE) and The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). These two commissions were selected as typical of all commissions even though others may differ in minor ways. The following table identifies similar standards for each commission.

Table 1

Comparison of Standards for MSCHE and SACSCOC

		MSCHE	SACSCOC
1	Mission	X	X
2	Ethics	X
3	Design & Delivery of Instruction	X
4	Library & Learning/ Information Resources		X
5	Educational Program & Structure		X
6	Educational Policies, Procedures, &Practices		X
7	Outcomes	X	X
8	Faculty		X
9	Student Support Services		X
10	Financial & Physical Resources		X
11	Plans & Goals	X	X
12	Transparency & Institutional Representation		X
13	Governance & Administration	X
14	Governing Board		X

While these two commissions may set-out the standards in different groupings, in the end, they are both going after the same type of information. They both are looking for: authority for their existence, evidence of planning and control of instruction, information showing strategic planning, documentation of governance mechanisms including shared governance between academic program and the president and the board of trustees.

The work involved in collecting data, writing reports, committee meetings, reviews, putting together the final document, and preparing staff, faculty, administration, and the board of trustees can run into a hundred thousand hours of work during the year of the accreditation visit. Yet, preparing data and draft reports for the visit can take several years. In addition, the reports for academic and instructional departments may take a disproportional amount of time to complete.

However, it is worth questioning whether today’s accreditation process truly serve the interests of the government, who provide a substantial, if not most of the funds, for most colleges and universities and does it serve the interests of the students who enter the institution to gain skills that will serve their financial needs in the future. I suggest that the current certification system is too process oriented, time consuming, and needs to be redesigned to respond to two essential questions – can students find ‘gainful employment’^[1] after graduation and does the institution have sufficient resources to serve its mission, support current operations, and provide sufficient assets for future students. Here is how I would suggest restructuring the certification process:

1. Legitimacy – Collect data on the current governmental authority and incorporation documentation of the legitimacy of the institution to operate.
2. Annual Financial Condition– Provide three years of audits and management letters to attest to the financial condition of the college.
3. Legal Liabilities -Provide information from the college’s legal counsel about outstanding legal actions against the college or its employees.
4. Strategic Financial Condition -Use Richard Cyert’^[2]s model of economic equilibrium to estimate if the institution has sufficient resources to accomplish its mission, both now and in the future. His concept of equilibrium asks these two questions:

• Does the institution have sufficient quality and quantity of resources to fulfill the mission of an institution?
• Does the organization maintain: the purchasing power of its financial assets and facilities in satisfactory condition.
• Cyert’s equilibrium model is not difficult to compute and universities have data available in their audits.

1. Graduate Employment – Collect data on the gainful employment of graduates over a fixed time period Although this requirement has not yet been approved by the government to determine if a college is to receive funding, it is significant information that the college needs and students need to determine the value of a degree.
2. Graduate Proceeding to Graduate/Professional Schools – Collect data on graduates who apply to graduate or professional schools to determine if they were accepted. This standard is not part of a proposed federal student funding decision, it is relevant to the college and to students intending to get either a graduate or professional degree. If a college is counseling students with the intention of earning a post-baccalaureate intention, the college and these students need to know how successful graduate are at earning the next degree.
3. Graduate Skills Analysis – Collect data on the skills of graduating students compared to entering students, to comparable institutions, and to curricula identified skills. This standard is directly pointed out at the real question about going to college. Do the skills of its graduates achieve the skills defined in the curricula and are their skills greater than the skills when they entered college.

These seven revised accreditation standards would replace the fourteen steps currently used by most accreditation commissions. There is a possibility that the revised accreditation steps would require less time and resources than the current methods. The greatest challenge for colleges under the new system would be the challenge of collecting data on gainful employment. However, if the federal government eventually moves to this standard in its own consideration of funding for higher education, colleges will need to come to grips with data collection. It would not be too surprising to find third-party data analysts take on data collection and reports for the gainful employment standard.

Summary Argument – I would argue that if graduates have gainful employment, the acquired skills listed in the curriculum, and there are sufficient resources, then these outcomes speak for the validity of the processes.

Go to Doors to Academia for More Posts on the

Current State of Higher Education

NB: Editing assistance by

• James Gaddy, Vice-President for Advancement; Albright College
• Jack Corby, Vice-President; Stevens Strategy

Footnotes

1. . Gainful employment would follow the basic rules of the government that essential asks if a graduate can find employment that provides sufficient financial resources for their life, family, and future. It is not a happy phrase for many in higher education because of the difficulty of collecting the data, but it does get at one of the essential issues of the existence of a college, does it serve the future economic conditions of students given their cost of investment in a degree. ↑

2. . Richard M. Cyert was President of Carnegie-Mellon University, a noted economist, statistician, and author with James Marchof the seminal work on organizations – A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. ↑