Assuring the Quality of ACICS Quality Assurance
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ACICS’ effort to achieve rerecognition was in no small part supported by the diligence, hard work and good faith of its more than 970 member institutions.
Every five years the standards and performance of each accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education is subject to review and authorization. Achieving recognition means that an accrediting agency retains the Department’s endorsement as a reliable authority on institutional quality and integrity. In 2011, ACICS began the substantial process of re-recognition, submitting volumes of documents and other evidence to inform the Department’s review of its compliance with accrediting regulations and expectations. A result of that initial review was a finding by the Department’s advisory committee (The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity or NACIQI) that ACICS was deficient in its program of accreditation in certain areas, including the application of student achievement standards at the institutional and program levels.
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The Council and executive leadership engaged member institutions and other key stakeholders in a series of discussions – through workshops, webinars, email blasts, responses to field memos and other devices – about the appropriate level of student achievement to expect as a minimum qualification for
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accreditation. Those expectations were codified as new standards at the institutional and program levels, communicated to colleges and schools and applied beginning with 2012 performance data. The detail of that process of enhancing student achievement standards was the substance of a lengthy compliance report the Department received from ACICS in 2012. The Department’s analysis of that report, as well as a subsequent response from ACICS if appropriate, will go to NACIQI in mid-2013 for final disposition. ACICS’ effort to achieve rerecognition was in no small part supported by the diligence, hard work and good faith of its more than 970 member institutions. Likewise, the affirmation of ACICS’ standards and program of quality assurance will reflect favorably on the quality of the institutions bearing the ACICS imprimatur.