David Mielke: Why should you care about higher education accreditation?
But only through accreditation can we ensure a college or university meets quality standards and its graduates will earn relevant degrees preferred by employers in an ever-tightening job market.
Accreditation is provided by accrediting bodies, which review a school’s faculty, recruiting practices, course content, graduation rates and more.
Accreditation requires that standards are met, for example, for faculty, library resources and, most importantly, for quality learning.
For every degree program, a set of learning goals must be established and a plan to assess whether or not learning has occurred. If the learning goals are not achieved, programs are to be revised. “Closing the loop” with the setting of goals, assessment of those goals and then possibly revising the programs themselves is a required system of continuous improvement.
The purpose of accreditation is to:
• Use standards of evaluation to ensure quality education;
• Encourage institutions to improve quality of education;
• Ensure the accountability of educational institutions; and
• Provide public confidence in educational institutions.
The advantages of accreditation are many. Schools are held accountable for continually working to improve quality and results of the education they provide. Accreditation affirms the level of the quality of education the general public has the right to expect and the educational community recognizes.
Students must understand the importance of accreditation and the risks of receiving a degree from a school without accreditation. So should businesses, industry and the general public.
Much is at stake.
According to the 2004 census, Michigan was ranked 37th in the U.S. with 24.4 percent of its population with at least a bachelor’s degree. The weighted average for the country was 27.2 percent.
When we talk about the need to increase the number of our students earning a college degree to help serve as the foundation for economic development, we must think about accountability.
Are there learning goals for academic programs? Does quality learning occur? Is there a process of continuous improvement?
The answers to these questions are yes if the college or university is accredited and a stronger yes if there is an additional accrediting organization for professional programs.
The North Central Higher Learning Commission accredits our public universities.
Business and other professional schools have additional accrediting bodies that set additional requirements and, as a core objective, require the establishment of learning goals, a system of assessment and continuous improvement.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is the premier business school accrediting association accrediting about 35 percent of business schools worldwide.
The College of Business at Eastern Michigan University is AACSB accredited and as a result must file an annual report and every five years go through an in depth reaccreditation review. In doing so, we validate, for example, that we have met the six learning goals for the MBA program: Students will:
• Demonstrate oral and written communication knowledge and skills;
• Apply critical thinking/analytic skills;
• Apply knowledge of ethical decision-making, ethical corporate governance and corporate social responsibility in solving business problems;
• Demonstrate knowledge of international and cross-cultural issues;
• Demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to solve business problems; and
• Demonstrate strategic/innovative thinking in solving business problems.
Assessment usually occurs in specific courses, but as you notice, these learning goals require more extensive assessment methods than merely administrating a standardized multiple choice set of questions. Most of the assessment requires students to complete a business case specifically designed to evaluate a skill or knowledge.
The goal itself may be that 80 percent of the students achieve a satisfactory score for written communication knowledge and skills. If they don’t, the curriculum is revised to improve learning.
Accreditation requires that colleges and universities enforce standards on education and, as a result, build a stronger foundation for the students they graduate.
When choosing a college or university or hiring a graduate, remember: Assessment plus accreditation = accountability.
-David Mielke is dean of Eastern Michigan University’s College of Business and a leader of SPARK East, a start-up business incubator in downtown Ypsilanti. He can be reached at dmielke@emich.edu.