overview of the seven year model lee thornton. is accreditation the most boring and diabolical plot...
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Overview of the Seven Year Model
Lee Thornton
Is accreditation the most boring and diabolical plot ever conceived to torture the sensibilities of higher education faculty and administrators?
(depends on your level of investment)
What is the purpose of accreditation?
Value of reviewing its history
Higher Education Accreditation:How it is Changing and How We Must
Paul L. Gaston
According to USDE: the overarching goal of accreditation is to “ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality.”
NWCCU Mission Statement: Assure educational quality, enhance institutional effectiveness, and foster continuous improvement among member institutions.
Other functions of accreditation also include:
---Regulating access to federal and state funds
---Enabling student transfer
---Engendering private sector confidence
Match made in heaven: USDE, States, Regional Accreditation, and institutions of higher education
Unfortunately, there is trouble in River City:
Regional accreditation is under attack.
According to Gaston: critics argue that accreditation has failed to keep pace with an increasing diversified and problematic higher education environment. Standards are neither clearly expressed or rigorously enforced. Respect for the disparate missions of institutions and programs has lapsed into indecisiveness and leniency. Scrutiny is no longer penetrating, quality is no longer assured, and improvements prompted by accreditation are few. Accreditation has become a self-protective club from which few are excluded. As a result, government is compromised in its ability to make “sound judgments about the use of public funds,” transfer of credit remains unpredictable and insistent…..accreditation is a broken system.
White House Documents 2013 State of Union
President will call on Congress to consider value, affordability, and student outcomes in making determinations about which college and universities receive access to federal student aid, either by incorporating measures of value and affordability into the existing accreditation system; or by establishing a new, alternative system of accreditation that would provide pathways for higher education models and colleges to receive federal student aid based on performance and results.
Efforts to create national standards
President Obama rating system (linking federal aid to graduation rates, graduate earnings, tuition costs and access---measured by number of students that receive Pell Grants. Obama has stated that he does not trust accreditors to choose criteria on which to evaluate colleges and wants a larger federal role in determining what constitutes a quality education.
What’s at stake?
Federal funding for higher education◦$50 billion student loans◦$10 billion student grants◦$7 billion in tax credits◦$15 billion for basic and applied research
What are the implication of national standards?
Can there be national standards that respond effectively to individual student differences, institutional autonomy and decision-making, and support the concept of mission-centric institutional evaluation?
How important are collegial evaluation processes?
Can they be impartial and sufficiently rigorous?
How has regional accreditation and particularly NWCCU been working over the years to improve regional accreditation?
◦Developing new standards and a new accreditation process that went from a ten year cycle with nine standards to a seven year cycle with five more highly integrated standards
:◦Evolving from an evaluation of inputs and
outputs to a system’s view on outcomes focusing on a summative assessment of institutional fulfillment and sustainability.
◦Increasing communication with members emphasizing that accreditation is a process complementary to the institution’s own self-assessment.
◦confirming the mission-centric philosophy of regional accreditation
◦norming evaluator training
INPUTS OUTPUTS OUTCOMES
FACULTYSTAFFFACILITIESEQUIPMENTBUDGETPLANNINGPOLICIES
COURSESPROGRAMSWORKSHOPSCOUNSELINGRESEARCHSERVICES
BENEFIT OR CHANGE IN THESHORT TERM, MID TERM, LONG TERM
Feedback/Continuous Improvement
What is the intended purpose of the institution? ◦While recognizing that complex
adaptable organizations can have many outcomes both intended and unintended, for the purposes of accreditation and assessing mission fulfillment, it is critical that institutions express their intended purpose in terms sufficiently pragmatic as to be measurable thus providing evidence to prove mission fulfillment.
Mission/ Mission Fulfillment Intended Purpose
and Sustainability (purpose) (means) (ends)
Everything should be as simple
as possible but not simpler.
A. Einstein
Institutional Example 1
Mission Statement:
Transforming lives: Building Communities
Core themes
Teaching and LearningCommunity EngagementResource Development
Institutional Example 2
Mission Statement
X college upholds an environment of diversity, fairness, equity, and sustainability, providing opportunities for the people of Thornton counties to succeed in their pursuit of higher educational achievement, meaningful employment, and basic skills development, while promoting cultural enrichment and well-being for its community.
X college is a comprehensive two-year college that provides quality education and effective job preparation. X college has a powerful impact on every segment of the community through the End States listed below.
Core Themes
◦Opportunity◦Academic◦Occupational and workforce development◦Basic Skills◦Cultural development◦Physical well-being
Institutional Example 3Mission Statement
The primary mission of the University is the preservation, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge. The University preserves knowledge through its libraries and collections, its courses, and the scholarship of its faculty. It advances new knowledge through many forms of research, inquiry and discussion; and disseminates it through the classroom and the laboratory, scholarly exchanges, creative practice, international education, and public service. As one of the nation's outstanding teaching and research institutions, the University is committed to maintaining an environment for objectivity and imaginative inquiry and for the original scholarship and research that ensure the production of new knowledge in the free exchange of facts, theories, and ideas.To promote their capacity to make humane and informed decisions, the University fosters an environment in which its students can develop mature and independent judgment and an appreciation of the range and diversity of human achievement. The University cultivates in its students both critical thinking and the effective articulation of that thinking.As an integral part of a large and diverse community, the University seeks broad representation of and encourages sustained participation in that community by its students, its faculty, and its staff. It serves both non-traditional and traditional students. Through its three-campus system and through educational outreach, evening degree, and distance learning, it extends educational opportunities to many who would not otherwise have access to them.
Mission Statement con’t
The academic core of the University is its College of Arts and Sciences; the teaching and research of the University's many professional schools provide essential complements to these programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural and mathematical sciences. Programs in law, medicine, forest resources, oceanography and fisheries, library science, and aeronautics are offered exclusively (in accord with state law) . In addition, the University has assumed primary responsibility for the health science fields of dentistry and public health, and offers education and training in medicine for a multi-state region of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The schools and colleges of built environments, business, education, engineering, environment, information, nursing, pharmacy, public affairs, and social work have a long tradition of educating students for service to the region and the nation. These schools and colleges make indispensable contributions to the state and, with the rest of the University, share a long tradition of educating undergraduate and graduate students toward achieving an excellence that well serves the state, the region, and the nation.
Core themes
Research and Scholarship: The U creates an outstanding climate of support for research and scholars. It fosters innovative interdisciplinary, collaborative, and transformational research and scholarship, while adhering to the highest standards of ethics in research and scholarship. The research facilities at the U are among the best in the U.S.
Teaching and Learning: The U provides leadership for innovative and effective teaching that provides transformative learning experiences for students with the goal of educating future leaders and scholars through a challenging learning environment. It provides access to instruction and services that enable students to be successful in their postsecondary endeavors. Recognizing the value of a diverse learning environment for all, the UW welcomes and educates a diverse population of students and recruits and supports diverse faculty and staff.
Service: The U addresses and responds to issues related to its community and beyond, helps fuel the economic engine of the Pacific Northwest, and provides the highest quality of healthcare to the region.
Institutional Example 4
Mission of the CollegeThe College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity. Its undergraduate program of study, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, is demanding and intense and balances breadth of knowledge across the curriculum with depth of knowledge in a particular field of study. The goal of the Thornton education is that students learn and demonstrate rigor and independence in their habits of thought, inquiry, and expression.
Core Themes
1. Intellectual Rigor Intellectual rigor is exemplified in at least three
ways: 1) our first-year humanities core course; 2) our college-wide distribution requirements; and 3) the design of our programs for majors, including
the junior qualifying exam and a year-long senior thesis.
2. Independence of Thought, Inquiry, and Expression◦Among the requirements for the major is
completion of a year-long senior thesis based on original research or artistic expression. In addition to completing a written document or a creative work (which includes a written critical section), each student must defend his or her completed thesis at an oral exam. The four member committee of examiners for the oral exam includes faculty members from within and outside of the student’s discipline.
◦Ensure the quality of faculty 1. We assess the quality of instruction and course
materials through a universal system of student course evaluation.
3) Support a Learning Environment
All members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, are governed by an Honor Principle, which emphasizes personal responsibility and mutual respect in the conduct of one’s affairs.
The college believes that pursuit of its academic goals is advanced by actively seeking a student body, a faculty, and a staff that reflect a diversity of social, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
In service of its educational mission, the college provides a broad array of counseling and health-related programs, cultural events, extracurricular and
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH OUTCOMES?
1) Fascination with inputs and outputs2) Mission clarification3) Defining quality….an epistemological
problem---beliefs transcending what we actually know
4) Understanding emergence: higher education organizations are complex, adaptable, non-linear systems
5) Systematic collection of longitudinal data