Transcript Slide 1

Overview of the
Seven Year Model
Lee Thornton
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Is accreditation the most boring and diabolical
plot ever conceived to torture the sensibilities
of higher education faculty and administrators?
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(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.
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What’s at stake?
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Federal funding for higher education
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$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?
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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 selfassessment.
◦ confirming the mission-centric philosophy of
regional accreditation
◦ norming evaluator training
INPUTS
OUTPUTS
OUTCOMES
FACULTY
STAFF
FACILITIES
EQUIPMENT
BUDGET
PLANNING
POLICIES
COURSES
PROGRAMS
WORKSHOPS
COUNSELING
RESEARCH
SERVICES
BENEFIT OR
CHANGE IN
THE
SHORT TERM,
MID TERM,
LONG TERM
Feedback/Continuous Improvement
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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/
Intended Purpose
(purpose)
(means)
Mission Fulfillment
and Sustainability
(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 Learning
Community Engagement
Resource 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
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Opportunity
Academic
Occupational and workforce development
Basic Skills
Cultural development
Physical well-being
Institutional Example 3
Mission 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
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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.
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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.
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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 College
The 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 healthrelated programs, cultural events, extracurricular
and
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH OUTCOMES?
1)
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Fascination with inputs and outputs
Mission clarification
Defining quality….an epistemological
problem---beliefs transcending what we
actually know
Understanding emergence: higher education
organizations are complex, adaptable, nonlinear systems
Systematic collection of longitudinal data