Institutional Quality and Accreditation

The following presentation gives an introduction to regional accreditation in the United States, the Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), and the purposes of accreditation. It also gives an overview of the ACCJC accreditation process, the 2002 Accreditation Standards, and the reliance on evidence in accreditation. It is based on an ACCJC workshop by Dr. Deborah G. Blue and Mr. G. Jack Pond from 2006. Workshop participants were told the presentations would be posted online for download and could be used for in-house training. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, this did not happen. Rachel Mason and I reproduced and adapted the original presentations for staff training sessions on accreditation and continuous quality improvement in 2007. This version is a revision of the 2007 adaptation. Some material has been deleted, some has been revised, updated and/or expanded, and about a third of the pages are new to this version. The additional material includes a new map of the U.S. accreditation regions, and charts of possible ACCJC actions, the ACCJC 6-year accreditation cycle, and a simplified version of the evidence-based integrated planning and assessment cycle required by the 2002 Standards.

TFR InstitutionQuality&Accreditation ACCJC2006 TVT2009

This presentation is posted as per the original intentions of Dr. Blue and Mr. Pond, if you find material in it useful please include a citation to their original workshop in addition to this post. The map and charts were created by Todd V. Titterud for The Follow-Up Report and can be cited separately.

October 2009 Accreditation Reports

The Action Letters and Reports page of The Follow-Up Report has been updated to include links to October 2009 accreditation reports. The page now includes links to thirteen 2009 Institutional Self-Studies and an additional eighteen October 2009 reports from the community colleges in the ACCJC region.

Also, the first draft of a new page with links to the Research, Planning, and Assessment web pages and related documents from the colleges has finally been completed and will be added to the site when the second draft is finished.

At-Risk Colleges in the ACCJC Region

The Commission Actions and Status page of The Follow-Up Report has been revised to incorporate the June 2009 actions of the Commission. New charts have been added to illustrate the 2003-2009 trends. The following charts illustrate the trend for an increased proportion of ACCJC colleges being classified as at-risk:

Sixty-seven schools have been sanctioned (Warning, Probation, or Show Cause status) by the Commission one or more times between January 2003 and June 2009. In other words, half (49.3%) of the schools in the ACCJC region have been sanctioned within a seven-year period. An additional fifty-five schools (40.4%) had to have their continued accreditation status confirmed through a Follow-Up, Interim, Progress, or Focused Midterm Report showing progress on resolving issues of concern to the commission. Only 14 schools (10.3%) had their accreditation affirmed or reaffirmed without first being sanctioned or required to submit a confirmation report.

The average number of schools sanctioned per year increased by 364% from 2003 (5.5 schools) to 2009 (25.5 schools) with the average percentage of schools sanctioned per year increasing from a low of about four percent (2003) to a high of over eighteen percent (2008 and 2009).

ACCJC June 2009 Commission Actions

The June 2009 actions of the ACCJC Commission are now available on the "Recent Commission Actions" page of their website and some colleges have already posted copies online of their action letters and corresponding accreditation reports. The "Action Letters and Reports" page of The Follow-Up Report has been updated with the latest actions and available links for each college. The following table summarizes the actions of the Commission for 2009 (click on the image to see a larger version of the table):

The June 2009 actions will soon be added to the analysis and charts on the "Commission Actions and Status" page of The Follow-Up Report. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that over 300 degrees, programs, or certificates were submitted for substantive change approval in June for exceeding 50% or more delivery through a distance or electronic delivery mode (more than twice the number submitted for approval in January). It appears that the rumors and warnings of a "rampant creep" of offerings to online delivery without the required prior approval of the Commission may have been accurate. I wonder how many colleges are currently auditing their offerings and writing after-the-fact requests for substantive change approvals? How many more should be? How much additional catch-up time will the Commission give us before it starts issuing sanctions?

Action Letters and Reports

The Action Letters and Reports page of The Follow-Up Report lists Commission actions for each college in the ACCJC region since January 2003 with links to the home and accreditation pages of the colleges. Wherever possible, it also includes links to copies of the Commission Action Letters to the college (including Warning, Probation, and Show Cause letters), college reports to the Commission (including Self-Studies, Midterm Reports, Progress Reports, Follow-Up Reports, and Show Cause Reports), and reports to the college from the Commission visitation teams.

ACCJC Actions and Accreditation Status

The Commission Actions and Status page of The Follow-Up Report gives a brief overview of ACCJC actions from January 2003 to January 2009 and charts the changing accreditation status of schools in the region. Almost half of all ACCJC colleges (61 schools) have been sanctioned (placed on Warning, Probation, or Show Cause) at least once in the past six years. It presents a three-color safety/traffic code (Red, Yellow, and Green) to classify the accreditation status of each college and uses a one-year moving average to plot the trend of colleges under sanction (which ranged from a low of 4.3% in June 2003 to a high of 19.6% in June 2008 and January 2009).

Introducing The Follow-Up Report

Welcome to The Follow-Up Report Press blog. This is the "pressroom" and publications companion site to The Follow-Up Report website created in May 2009.

The Follow-Up Report (https://sites.google.com/site/thefollowupreport/) was created by Todd V. Titterud to share information with friends and colleagues in ACCJC accredited colleges. It is a follow-up on the implementation of the 2002 Standards and the strengthened enforcement of the two-year rule. It was created as a resource to help colleagues understand current trends in Commission actions and to succeed in their own efforts to achieve continuous institutional learning and improvement.

The blog will post overviews of The Follow-Up Report (TFR) pages and updates; TFR publications; and links to and/or reviews/overviews of related websites and online publications.