^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

[A]t the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy.

• “The Future of Accreditation” by Judith S. Eaton
• “Accreditation and the Public Interest: Can Accreditors Continue to Play a Central Role in Public Policy?” by Terry W. Hartle
• “What’s an Accrediting Agency Supposed to Do? Institutional Quality and Improvement vs. Regulatory Compliance” by Elizabeth H. Sibolski
• “AQIP and Accreditation: Improving Quality and Performance” by Stephen D. Spangehl
• “Show Me the Learning: Value, Accreditation, and the Quality of the Degree” by Terrel L. Rhodes

SCUP members can visit their journal and download the entire issue, or selected articles as PDFs, MOBI (Kindle), and EPUB (iPad/iPhone and many Androids). About the contents, Middaugh writes:

The implications for planners of the issues raised in these five articles are both immediate and profound. How does higher education preserve and protect the integrity

of the peer evaluation process in quality assurance and,at the same time, responsibly address calls for greater transparency and accountability from the government and other entities? How do colleges and universities best work with their regional accrediting bodies to ensure the integrity of educational services provided under Title IV financial aid without having those accrediting bodies morph into the “accreditation police”? And at the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy. The editorial staff of Planning for Higher Education is deeply grateful to the five authors who have so generously contributed to this issue of the journal. Their insights are quite provocative and provide substantial material for those of us whose planning activity is immersed in improving the quality of our institutions. (emphasis added)

For the past several months, SCUPer Donald M. Norris has been interviewing leaders in the field of analytics, with regard to higher education. He has summarized best practices and vision in the white paper this post is titled after is also subtitled: "Insights on the Leading Edge From Interviews With Vendors, Practitioners, and Thought Leaders." It can be downloaded at the Public Forum on Action Analytics. 

The following quotation is from page 7,  "Five Insights From the Vendors":

• First, greater affordability and substantial pressure for continuing cost reductions was a pervasive theme. Institutions are demanding this and the vendors are responding. Vendors expressed the desire to provide analytics solutions for any type of institution, and touted examples of community colleges, small professional schools, and mid-sized universities that had deployed affordable analytics applications. The financial crisis will accelerate the affordability imperative.

• Second, the need is widely recognized for analytics that are designed and delivered for the masses and are user friendly and widely available. While some power-user-based reports will continue to be “pushed” out to users, over time analytics increasingly will be “pulled” by ever more sophisticated end users using applications crafted for the masses.

• Third, multi-vendor analytics environments on many campuses will continue to be the norm. Many leading-edge institutions are hedging their bets against a single vendor solution. Indeed, no single vendor solution exists for the multitude of analytics needs and opportunities necessary to achieve the ultimate solution – Action Analytics.

• Fourth, the conversation about new analytics capabilities is closely linked to the emergence of the enterprise technology that will succeed LMS 1.0. On the exhibit floor and in the hallways at EDUCAUSE 2010, a favorite topic of conversation centered on “What is your next LMS decision going to be?” Institutional leaders are exploring many options, including no formal LMS at all. These conversations inevitably included enhancing the analytics that existing LMSs have been unable to provide or support adequately.

• Fifth, there is greater sophistication in talking about the future uses of affordable analytics among vendors and campus executives: presidents, provosts, CFOs, CIOs, and campus planners. Over the past several years, the ERP, LMS, and Analytics vendors have been educating the marketplace – and one another – on how to move beyond the limitations of the existing ERP and LMS stacks. What new analytics needs will be required to deal with emerging institutional needs. Likewise, campus leaders have been facing greater pressure to provide accountability statistics and to improve performance, which requires embedded, formative analytics.

Wow, if nothing else, this article reinforces the diversity of opinions about outcomes and success in learning, and the disparity of motivating forces.

"If a student gets an A in my class, and an A in yours, then we say the student is good," says William G. Tierney, director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at USC. "We don't make any comments about what the student has actually learned."

That's the case in part because university prestige often stands in as a proxy for learning. "The general public, they want to go to Stanford whether you learn anything or not," says Ms. Kezar. "As long as employers and parents promote that system, it's not really about what you learn, they just care if students go to a prestigious place."

Indeed, many professors feel little pressure from either students or the public to change the way they do business. "Why I need to spend a lot of time working with my colleagues documenting learning outcomes is unclear to me," Mr. Tierney says of a hypothetical professor. "What is going to happen if I don't? Will no one take my classes? Will no students attend this university?" Faculty members, Mr. Tierney notes, are busier than ever, and assessing student learning is often viewed as just one more demand on their time. "Should they pay attention to learning outcomes rather than understand how to make their classes go online or how to update the syllabus on reading that's changed in their area in the last year?" he asks. "They can't do it all."

If there is any pressure from students, say professors, it is to keep classwork manageable.

 Many years ago this writer was hired to do some computer training at a for-profit school. Arriving to teach one day, he discovered the local sheriff, locking the place up and was quick-talking enough to persuade the sheriff to let him take home his personal computer, which had been stored at the school. As for-profits move to fill the gap and be part of the push for more graduates, many criticize them - and many for-profits feel unfairly tarred by the brush of bad stories. Read more.

Government money, lightly supervised institutions, unchecked supervising bodies and debt-trapped students — it all sounds similar to the subprime-mortgage collapse that is still fresh in America's mind. "The analogies are unbelievable," said Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, linking the for-profit education boom to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, the dotcom boom of the '90s and the recent mortgage bubble, which was helped along by lax credit-rating agencies and loose regulation.

For-profit school leaders deny the parallel. "It's silly and simplistic," responds Harris Miller, CEO and president of the Career College Association. "The analogy between the [for-profit college] accrediting bodies and the [credit] rating service is absolute nonsense." Corinthian Colleges Inc. downplays default numbers and cites an Office of Management and Budget figure showing that loan-repayment rates have actually risen in the past decade.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link on Changes to Recognition of Accrediting Organizations!

The process by which CHEA, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, recognizes accrediting organizations is being changes. If you have an opinion on those changes, you have until May 31 to respond via an online form.

The proposed revisions are an effort to assure that CHEA recognition plays a meaningful role as part of a strong and vibrant accreditation enterprise, reflecting the best of self-regulation and peer/professional review in serving the public interest. The revisions address the challenges of expanded international activity, degree mills and maintaining accreditation independence and transparency. They also address the recognition process, interim reporting on major changes and the time periods associated with denial of CHEA recognition or official withdrawal of consideration for CHEA recognition.