Workshop: Linking Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

You could not find a better presentation or a better, more-informed set of presenters on this topic.

Audience: Planners new to the use of the assessment process in accreditation activities as a springboard to integrated planning

Abstract: This workshop focuses on strategies for effectively utilizing information drawn from a broad range of assessment activities. It goes deeper into the content found in the SCUP volume, Integrating Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Guide (2006). Participants will identify the information that should drive the strategic planning process at a college or university and that provides the evidence needed to make more targeted decisions in the allocation of human and fiscal resources. The presentation will also highlight the linkage between assessment and planning as a critical compliance criterion among all regional accrediting bodies in the United States. The workshop will use a series of exercises throughout the presentation to interactively engage participants and reinforce the concepts and principles being presented. Each participant will receive a comprehensive workbook containing presentation materials and a list of resources for use upon completion of the workshop.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Hate Learning Objectives?

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, Learning to Hate Learning Objectives: I don't know whether accreditation works or whether it matters. I only know that, for me, teaching and learning are inseparable and driven not by "learning objectives," goals, outcomes, performance indicators, or assessment rubrics, but by complicated, often painful, but always irresistible compulsions

Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access

So, law school tuition just goes up and up. Why? View a Chronicle report by Eric Kelderman (the quote below is from the Chronicle) and the full GAO report here (PDF).

Critics have sometimes blamed the accreditation standards of the American Bar Association for driving up the cost of law school and making it more difficult for students of color to be admitted to those programs.

But a report released on Monday by the Government Accountability Office says that most law schools surveyed instead blamed competition for better rankings and a more hands-on approach to educating students for the increased price of a law degree. In addition, the federal watchdog agency reported that, over all, minorities are making up a larger share of law-school enrollments than in the past, although the percentage of African-American students in those programs is shrinking. The GAO attributed that decrease to lower undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on law-school admissions tests.

Measure, Measure, Measure . . . Then What?

Scott Jaschick of Inside Higher Ed recently spent some time listening to folks heavily engaged in various assessment activities. He writes here about NSSE, National Survey of Student Engagement, and here about a report from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).

• NSSE
• NILOA

The latter study found that the top use of assessment data is, no surprise, for another form of assessment: accreditation. The NSSE folks and the NILOA folks, according to Jaschik, each would like to see more use of assessment data in order to effect change. The Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education finds success can be had by using NSSE assessment data to effect change. The NILOA report, which can be found in its entirety here, breaks down assessment data in a number of use type categories and in a number of institutional categories.

NSSE

NILOA

The New Guys in Assessment Town: Companies

Pat Hutchings, writing in Change magazine, broadly explores the new world of for-profit consultants and technology teams.

[T]here’s a new kind of help on the way, from outside the institution. Of course many campuses have engaged external consultants to jumpstart the assessment process; that’s not new. And neither is the use of tests and instruments designed by others. What’s new is an influx of for-profit assessment providers offering tools and services that promise, variously, to make assessment easier, faster, less intrusive, more useful, and/or more cost effective.

Some of these firms were founded in the last two or three years and are just getting started. Others have a longer, already prosperous history of work in other aspects of education (like course management) and are now moving into the assessment niche. A few have their roots in other industries—like quality assurance in health care—and have recently added student assessment to the mix. Some are run by academics or former academics and some by people with a corporate background.

AGB-CHEA Joint Advisory Statement on Accreditation & Governing Boards

You may not have previously read this four-page advisory statement (PDF). It's succinct and useful checklist of issues and considerations around boards of trustees and their relationship to (and awareness of) the accreditation cycle of an institution. 

Governing boards, working in collaboration with institutional leadership, are obligated to ensure mission achievement and institutional fiscal integrity as part of their fundamental fiduciary responsibility. Accordingly, understanding accreditation and its relevance to educational quality is extremely important. Governing boards need to be appropriately engaged in the accreditation process, respecting the leadership of the chief executive officer, the chief academic officer, and the faculty; acknowledging the importance of accreditation to serving students; and understanding that board engagement, awareness, and follow-up are fundamental to their fiduciary responsibilities.

History of Accreditation and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education

This 20-page booklet (PDF) traces the origins and evolution of accreditation in the United States and provides highlights of the Commission's first 90 years.

Peace in Accreditation Land

Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Doug Lederman summarizes recent happenings in "accreditation land" this way: "In stark contrast to 2007, federal negotiations over accreditation rules end in accord, overcoming dispute over student learning outcomes that might have derailed the proceeding[s]."

"Those issues were on the agenda again as another panel of negotiators completed several months of work on accreditation at an Education Department office building Tuesday, but with a dramatically different result (and dramatically less drama). The college administrators, higher education lobbyists, accreditors, state officials and others around the conference table -- including Education Department staff members -- reached "consensus" on a package of 16 regulatory proposals to carry out changes Congress made in legislation to renew the Higher Education Act last summer. (When such negotiating sessions end with "consensus" among the parties on a package of regulatory changes, a federal agency is bound to propose them as is; when no consensus is reached, the agency can essentially do whatever it wants.)"

Read the full article here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/20/accredit

Accreditation: "Would You Still Need Me, Would You Still Feed Me, Without Title IV?"

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Related, A concurrent session at SCUP–44, July 18–22: Promoting Institutional Progress: Integrating Priorities and Processes Through Strategic Planning

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This is a top-notch story by Doug Lederman reporting from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges annual conference:

Sylvia Manning has heard all the complaints about accreditation before -- heck, she thought a lot of them herself during her nearly 40 years as a college administrator. Colleges find the process to be a mere obligation because it focuses on minimum standards and too often produces little of value to help the institutions improve. Critics who want more higher education accountability question whether accreditation is rigorous and transparent enough. Potential educational innovators say the process is inflexible and discourages creative approaches.

The critiques flow largely from the fact that higher education accreditation seeks to do two totally different things: ensure a minimum level of quality (with the accreditors in effect playing a compliance role on behalf of the federal government) and encourage individual colleges to improve themselves.

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Manning, who nine months ago became president of the country's largest regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, almost immediately appointed a committee to rethink the commission's approval process with those and other critiques in mind. This week, at the commission's annual meeting here, she unveiled a proposal to overhaul the accrediting agency's process for renewing its approval for already accredited colleges.

Is Europe Now Doing a Better Job of Assessment?

The Bologna Process for U.S. Eyes: Re-learning Higher Education in the Age of Convergence (PDF) is a new report by Clifford Adelman for the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The associated press release has some nice summary statements and choice quotations from the 258-page report itself, which is available online for free download.

While the United States remains concerned about its standing in terms of participation in global higher education and completion of degrees, 46 countries in Europe have been working for a decade on a completely different set of issues: bringing their higher education systems closer together in terms of standards for degrees, credit systems, more flexible pathways into and through higher education (hence, access), and accountability criteria. They call their undertaking “The Bologna Process,” and it is still a work in progress.

The Institute for Higher Education Policy’s (IHEP) new study, The Bologna Process for U.S. Eyes: Re-learning Higher Education in the Age of Convergence, contends the nation has misplaced its focus with pointing out that the countries involved in the Bologna Process are producing more and better degrees whose reference points in student learning outcomes is transparent—something that cannot be said for American awarded degrees. Countries outside of Europe have already recognized the profound revolution rolling from Cork to Vladivostok with parts of the Bologna Process having been imitated in Latin America, North Africa, and Australia, resulting in a global shift in higher education leadership.

For a long time, U.S. higher education did not pay much attention to the Bologna Process, but since IHEP published a long essay in May 2008, titled The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn from a Decade of European Reconstruction, the U.S. higher education has started listening seriously. Our nation is now starting to act, most notably, on learning outcomes in the context of the disciplines.

In fact, three state higher education systems—Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah—have begun their work examining and testing the Bologna “Tuning” process in six disciplines to determine the forms and extent of its potential in the United States contexts. Scarcely a year ago, such an effort, called “Tuning USA,” would have been unthinkable.

Accreditation and the Obama Administration

What do you think is Barack Obama's perception on quality and accountability issues in higher education? Who will influence his decision making? Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), took part in an online discussion of these and other issues. You can read it on The Chronicle of Higher Education website:

Accreditation is a process of external review developed by colleges to ensure and improve quality on an institution-wide and program-wide basis. But the self-regulation of higher education through accreditation has been challenged in recent years, in part because of criticisms led by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a leading advocate for accreditation and self-regulation, has begun a multiyear "CHEA Initiative" that aims to respond to public and governmental concerns about the process. As part of that process, and in preparation for the council's annual meeting next month, CHEA and the nation's accrediting agencies are examining matters that include the role of the federal government in accreditation and accountability, the use of student assessments in the accreditation process, and the expectations of the new Obama administration. Questions now facing colleges and the accreditation community include: Are accreditors likely to receive a warmer reception after January 20, or will they face renewed pressure for change from the new administration and Congress? Will the economic crisis put even greater pressure on accreditors to prove that colleges provide value to their students? What are the most important accreditation-related questions facing the new education secretary?

US Regional Accreditation Abroad: Lessons Learned

Jean Avnet Morse, President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, writes in International Higher Education about piloting its accreditation for non-US-style institutions incorporated abroad. One conclusion was "If profit for MSCHE were the motive, we would have been very disappointed." Others include:

There is no perfect solution for establishing international standards that address the issues of countries with different educational systems. US accreditors cannot achieve this goal alone. It may be useful for US regional accreditors to accredit institutions abroad in certain situations—especially for institutions that do not raise the types of difficult issues discussed earlier. US regional accreditors can also help to establish quality standards abroad by assuring that US-affiliated institutions abroad meet the same standards as domestic locations.

Accreditors might invest their time in projects with broader reach, such as ongoing international efforts by UNESCO, the World Bank, and others to create local quality-assurance systems that suit the needs of each country or region, while still operating within flexible international guidelines. Encouraging local review can produce systems that are accepted locally and that can also offer the quality assurance needed by institutions and students in other countries.

The MSCHE pilot project has been successful in identifying likely areas of similarity and differences among higher education institutions in various countries, and additional information will be gathered as the pilot project progresses. This important first step can serve as the foundation for international cooperation among quality-assurance agencies, and it can provide the agenda for addressing the most significant areas of difference.

Accreditors Agonistes

A Chronicle online Colloquoy with Judith Easton: "Last month college leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief as Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she would require "no one-size-fits-all measures, no standardized tests" from federally recognized agencies accrediting colleges. For months, colleges have been fighting language supported by the Bush administration in the reauthorized Higher Education Act that could impose assessment guidelines rather than giving colleges the ability to create their own. How will the debate shake out? Would college-created measures provide enough useful information to accreditors?

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.