Assuring and Improving Quality: Higher Education Accreditation in the United States

Stephen D. Spangehl

Director, Academic Quality improvement Project

The Higher Learning Commission

Chicago, Illinois USA

Academic Quality Improvement Project

Philosophy

Values

Criteria

Processes

Services

Advantages

Costs

The Higher Learning Commissionof the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Founded 1895; reorganized in 2000.

Membership includes approximately 1000 of 3500 U.S. higher education institutions

Typically conduct 200 site visits each year

Mission: “Serving the common good by assuring and advancing the quality of higher learning.”

19 States

1000 institutions

The North Central Association region

Higher Education in the U.S. Challenges and Changes

• Accountability for resources and results• Information and technology• Competition • Partnerships and collaboration• Agility and shorter response cycles• Success-orientation (preventing failure)• Management and Leadership evolution • Continuous performance improvement

Traditional U.S. Quality Assurance Process

• Institution conducts 1-2 year “self study” using accreditation criteria and standards

• Institution creates report of its findings, documenting it meets standards and identifying areas of concern for improvement

• Team of “peers” visits institution to verify accuracy of self-study report

• Team recommends continuing accreditation and writes report of findings

The Quality Movement

• Total Quality Management, Six Sigma• ISO (International Standards Association)

9000/2001 and Z1.11, Education and Training• American Society for Quality (ASQ)• Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and

state quality award programs• National Consortium for Continuous

Improvement (NCCI) & Continuous Quality Improvement Network (CQIN)

• Academic Quality Improvement Project

Goals of AQIP

• Help our member organizations improve their performance and maximize their effectiveness

• Reshape the relationship with members of our Commission into a partnership

• Provide the public with credible quality assurance concerning higher education providers

Process - Focused Thinking

Suppliers

ProvidersProcesses

Recipients

Beneficiaries

Customers

INPUTS OUTPUTS

Input Requirements Output Requirements

AQIP Philosophy

• Offer a voluntary, alternative process• Concentrate on the academic enterprise• Involve more faculty directly• Provide concrete feedback to enable

institutions to raise performance levels• Reduce intrusiveness, cost, slow

improvement cycles

AQIP Philosophy

• Replace “one-size fits all” approach• Supply the public with more

understandable, useful information concerning the quality and value of accredited colleges and universities

• Recognize and celebrate institutional distinctiveness and outstanding achievements

Who can participate?

• Institutions already accredited by NCA that want to use this process to maintain continued accreditation

• Institutions not accreditable by NCA that want to use AQIP to drive institutional improvement and seek interaction with other continuous improvers

• Quality-focused colleges or schools within large universities (where the university itself continues to use traditional process for institutional accreditation)

Principles of High Performance Organizations

• Characteristics of high-performing departments, colleges, & universities

• Guides to behaviors that need to be encouraged

• Non-prescriptive regarding specific organizational mission or purposes

• Actionable• Challenging

• Focus on a mission and vision driven by students' and other stakeholders' expectations

• Broad-based faculty, staff, and administrative involvement

• Leaders and leadership systems that support a quality culture

• A learning-centered environment

• Respect for and willingness to invest in people

• Collaboration and a shared institutional focus

• Agility, flexibility, and responsiveness to changing needs and conditions

• Planning for innovation and improvement

• Fact-based information-gathering and thinking to support analysis and decision-making

• Integrity and responsible institutional citizenship

Principles of High Performance Organizations

• The criteria provide lenses for examining groups of related processes

• The criteria promote a non-prescriptive dialogue about how an institution determines and achieves its goals

• Each criterion inquires into processes (approach & deployment), results, and improvement

Academic Quality Improvement Criteria

Overall, the AQIP Criteria ask:

• Are you doing the right things — the things that are most important in order to achieve your institution’s goals?

• Are you doing things well — effectively, efficiently, in ways that truly satisfy the needs of those you serve?

Each AQIP Criterion asks:

• How stable, well-designed, and robust are your systems and processes?

• How consistently do you deploy and employ your systems and processes?

• How satisfying and good are the results your systems and processes achieve?

• How do you use your performance data to drive improvement?

Measuring Effectiveness

UnderstandingStudents’and other

Stakeholders’Needs

Planning ContinuousImprovement

AccomplishingOther Distinctive

Objectives

Leading andCommunicating

ValuingPeople

HelpingStudents Learn

SupportingInstitutional Operations

Building CollaborativeRelationships

AQIP’s Processes

• Initial Interest Exploration and Self-Assessment

• Four-year cycle, consisting of Strategy Forum and Systems Appraisal

• Annual Update on Action Projects

• Formal Reaffirmation of Accreditation every seven years, based on pattern of successful participation and improvement

Interest Exploration

• Period to explore and understand continuous quality improvement thinking

• Gathering of information about AQIP’s expectations, benefits, and liabilities

• Lasts from a few weeks to several years

Vital Focus: Self-Assessment

Innovative process through which an institution can identify its greatest opportunities for improving quality

Alternative to using a state quality award application or consultant to examine institutional strengths and improvement opportunities within a systems perspective

Permits full involvement of the entire institution's faculty, staff, and administrators, full- and part-time

Launches an institution-wide dialogue on mission, core values, and the best strategies for strengthening them

Completed quickly without disrupting normal activities

Strategy Forum

Interactive forum for institutions to review each others’ Action Projects, providing and receiving feedback on specific goals and strategies

Opportunity to receive peer review of Action Projects before they are undertaken

Teams of institutional leaders craft and shape Action Projects together

Institutional teams begin to plan implementation and measurement to help Projects succeed

Action Projects

Dynamic improvement projects that drive an institution’s quality program — and inform AQIP

Selected by institution to promote learning and culture change and respond to opportunities for improvement, problems, or challenges.

Institution reports to AQIP annually on progress or completion of projects

Action Projects shared via AQIP website to promote collaboration and to enhance self-improving image of higher education

Annual Update

Short on-line update, due the first day of autumn, of institution’s progress on its Action Projects.

Reviewed by panel of quality experts, who provide feedback and advice.

Option for institution to request assistance in cases where progress is stalled.

Opportunity for institutions to identify “outstanding practices” that may deserve Commisison recognition and widespread publicity.

Systems Portfolio

100-page public institutional portfolio describing fundamental institutional systems

Covers the nine AQIP criteria, describing both processes and results for each system

Portfolio created once (after 3 years) and then maintained with changes in systems and results

Valuable for other accreditors, state agencies, building understanding, consensus, and support

Systems Appraisal

Independent appraisal of an institution’s Systems Portfolio, typically conducted every four years for institutions participating in AQIP

Prompt, consistent appraisals conducted by

heterogeneous panels of trained, experienced reviewers — including some from outside higher education — who are knowledgeable about quality

Systems Appraisal

Separate independent and consensus review stages, similar to Baldrige, ensure that appraisers compare their perceptions and produce feedback that represents the team’s shared views of institutional strengths and opportunities for improvement

• Blind review process, focusing institutional attention on the feedback itself rather than the identify of members of the team providing it

Systems Appraisal

• Feedback provided in summary rubrics for public information, and in confidential, detailed actionable comments and explanations

• Valuable professional feedback report for improvement created for each institution

Reaffirmation of Accreditation

When an institution joins, AQIP sets the date of its next re-affirmation of accreditation in 7 years.

Re-affirmation of accreditation every 7 years, based on pattern of participation that provides evidence of dedication to continuous improvement and a pattern of results that indicates the commitment is paying off.

No single visit or event precipitates or causes re-affirmation

• Challenging higher education criteria for key systems with results embedded in each criterion

• Improvement cycles based on feedback leading to focused Action Projects that stimulate improvement and change

• Collaboration and networking with peers in a non-threatening environment

• Re-accreditation integrated seamlessly with improvement based on an institution’s own mission, priorities, and agenda

AQIP’s Advantages

AQIP Services

Publications

Vital Focus Self-Assessment

Coaching Services

Training for institutional personnel

Collaborative Quality Colloquia

• There are a variety of opportunities to ask AQIP to provide trained consultants to work with an institution on specific improvement objectives.

• If a consultant visit has not occurred by the institution’s request, a brief site visit will be conducted once during the seven year period to confirm the institution complies with GIRs and federal requirements.

Customized Visits

• Initial Interest Exploration and Self-Assessment

• Three-year cycle, consisting of Strategy Forum and Systems Appraisal

• Annual Update on Action Projects

• Formal Reaffirmation of Accreditation every seven years, based on pattern of successful participation and improvement

AQIP’s Processes

Costs

• Strategy Forum

• Systems Appraisal

• Customized site visits or coaching

• Systems Portfolio preparation

• Action Project Updates

• System costs• Cost of poor

quality• Waste• Opportunity costs• Competitive

disadvantages

InterestExploration

Self-Assessment(Vital Focus)

Applicationto Join AQIP

SystemsAppraisal

Re-affirmAccreditation

StrategyForum

SystemsPortfolio

AnnualUpdate

ActionProjects

Contacting AQIP

Stephen D. Spangehl, DirectorAcademic Quality Improvement Project

The Higher Learning CommissionChicago, Illinois USA

Website: http://www.AQIP.orgEmail: sds@hlcommission.org

Telephone: 01 800 621-7440 ext. 106Fax: 01 312 263-7462