Human Services News

Jobs for the Future:

The focus of this brief is student success: To what extent can the accreditation process drive significant improvement in student persistence and completion at institutions that undergo the peer review process, particularly for students from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education?

Because this inquiry is in service to Achieving the Dream, a national initiative on community college student success involving nine states and fifty-seven community colleges, our particular interest is accreditation as it plays out in the community college sector.

For over a century, voluntary institutional accreditation, rather than regulation, has been the primary means of assuring quality in higher education in the United States. It is mainly through accreditation that colleges and universities establish their reputation among different stakeholders---students and parents, employers, other educational institutions, funders, and policymakers.

Accreditation enables institutions to determine whether a credential from another institution or courses taken elsewhere are of sufficient quality to be accepted.

Accreditation helps consumers assess the quality and stability of higher education institutions.

In the United States, for historical reasons, there are six regional accreditation agencies, housing eight higher education commissions.

Standards used in accreditation processes vary from one region to another.

Achieving the Dream/Jobs for the Future the existing system by arguing that institutional accreditation is inevitably complex and must stay flexible if it is to achieve its many goals.

The key in accreditation, they argue, is to find a balance: setting standards that can guide the institutional review process in clear directions, while preserving institutions' individual missions and objectives.