The Accreditation Process: Another View

This document is a talking-points paper for an oral presentation introducing the ATS Commission Self-Study process.

What is "accreditation?"

Three "moments" in the historical development of ATS accreditation:

• Resource audit/institutional capacity
• Significant membership expansion, with new members having differing "purposes," shifts the emphasis of accreditation to resources and degree programs
• Shift to "institutional effectiveness"

Accreditation

• is aspirational, about institutional improvement, and a catalyst for a good school to become better
• is worth investment of the valuable, intellectual capital of the faculty to gather a "snapshot" of what is working well in addition to what is in need of attention
• is not licensing or getting a ticket punched
• has institutional effectiveness as its overarching objective

Three critical questions for the school are

• Does the school have the capacity to assess effectiveness?
• How well does it use its capacity?
• How does the school use the results of its assessment activities for ongoing improvement?

Accreditation is both a process and a product

De-mystifying the "outcomes effectiveness" expectation in higher education:

• Evaluation—basic theme
• Benchmarks for process
• Process is straightforward
• People makes decisions—not data!

Two components of accreditation

• The self-study
• The visit

Summary

Accreditation is both a process and a product.

Accreditation requires a good self-study include the following characteristics:

• Sufficiently descriptive, but primarily focused on analysis
• Sufficient data are provided to substantiate and provide for the reader evidence bearing on the issues under discussion
• Clear decisions or conclusions result from the analysis, (e.g., identifies strengths to be sustained areas of needed growth)
• Utilizes available and useful ATS data, (e.g., Strategic Information Report, Institutional Peer Profile Report)
• Has a good concluding chapter that gathers the findings and recommendations provides the agenda for strategic and long-term planning
• A one- to two-page update of actions taken since the self-study was submitted.