College Portraits - New Website of the Voluntary System of Accountability

AASCU and NASULGC have been cooperating on the Voluntary System of Accountability and have now opened a new website, College Portraits. Here are a couple of statements from the accompanying press release:

“The College Portrait places America’s four-year public colleges and universities at the forefront of the higher education accountability movement,” said Peter McPherson, president of NASULGC. “College PortraitTM is designed to be trustworthy source of reliable data for prospective students, families, policymakers and the general public. It becomes the only voluntary accountability program that includes student learning outcomes and easily comparable information for a majority of the nation’s public four-year colleges and universities.”

“No one should be surprised that public higher education has taken the lead on accountability,” said Constantine W. (Deno) Curris, president of AASCU. “Our institutions have a long history of commitment to public accountability and learning outcomes. College PortraitTM is being unveiled at a time when severe financial constraints for both families and state governments increase our obligation to provide dependable, accurate information in keeping with our public trust.”

Campus Accountability Projects - Good Article

This new Inside Higher Ed article is a nicely comprehensive look, with lots of links out to documents and other articles, at two new accountability proposals: One from NAICU (National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities) and one from a collaboration between AASCU (American Association of State Colleges and Universities) and NASULGC (National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). Here is a PDF document containing a "mock up" of a report from "Accountability University" demonstrating the AASCU/NASULGC initiative's Voluntary System of Accountability. Here is NAICU's Consumer Information Template.

We know that former SCUP visiting board member, John Hammang, a senior AASCU official, has been instrumental in developing the AASCU/NASULGC initiative.

P.S. Here is a link to similar coverage by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

P.P.S. If you are interested in this article, you may be interested in taking a look at SCUP's resource page regarding Academic Planning and if your interest is related to the accreditation process, you are surely interested in the SCUP book, Integrating Higher Education Planning and Assessment: A Practical Guide.