Know Your Stakeholders, and Make Your College Relevant and Responsive to Them

No matter what your college’s purpose and culture, you have a responsibility to provide an education that is relevant to your students’ goals and plans and that serves the public good. Address the needs and interests of your college’s students and other stakeholders by advancing the cultures of relevance (Chapters 5–6) and of focus and aspiration (Chapters 9–12). Be prudent about engaging in efforts that standardize learning outcomes, curricula, and assessment strategies across colleges; do so only when it is in your students’ best interest.

Encourage and Support Great Teaching and Learning

There has been so much focus on assessment, accountability, and degree completion that it has been easy to lose sight of a far more fundamental need: making sure that students get a great education through great teaching and great learning opportunities (Suskie, 2010). As Kathleen Wise has pointed out, we have “a crisis of mediocre teaching” (Patel, 2014, para. 2). Address this by again advancing a culture of focus and aspiration. Hone your college’s purpose and goals to focus on teaching and learning, and commit to using research-informed teaching strategies and curriculum alignment tools that help students achieve deep, lasting learning.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The single best way to implement your quality agenda is to design everything you do to support that agenda. This means making sure everything—including resource deployment, hiring, professional development, organization, and governance structures—is designed to help achieve your aspirations.

Fight Complacency

Anyone asked to work on change, innovation, or betterment might rightly ask, “What’s in it for me? Why should I get involved with this, given everything else on my plate?” A culture of purposeful, evidence-informed betterment, critical to success in the 21st century, is far more likely when efforts to change and innovate are valued in tangible ways.

Break Down Silos

Silos are among the most pervasive obstacles I see to implementing the five cultures of quality. Address them by advancing a culture of community (see Chapters 7 and 8).

Tell Meaningful Stories of Your Successes

A quality college has distinctive traits, and each group of stakeholders has its own interests and needs regarding evidence and information. Make sure that the information you provide reflects your college’s voice and is truly relevant and meaningful to your students and other stakeholders.

How Can Higher Education Leaders and Others Help?

Several years ago, I noted: “There are increasing calls both within and outside the academy to do all we can to ensure that students graduate with the knowledge, skills, and competencies they need for successful careers and rich, fulfilling lives. We in higher education are responding by embarking on nothing less than a radical transformation of what and how we teach our students” (Suskie, 2008, p. 6).

This is even truer today. The kind of transformation that U.S. higher education needs—one that embraces all five cultures of quality—can happen only with the active involvement of higher education leaders, including college presidents, higher education associations, and accreditors. Foundations, government policymakers, employers, and current and prospective students have critical roles as well. In Chapter 1, I listed a few of the ways that many of these groups have been stepping up to the plate. But higher education leaders and others can do more to continue to ensure and advance quality in U.S. higher education by focusing on the six big ideas that I have just put forth.

1. Know higher education’s stakeholders, and make higher education relevant and responsive to them. Accreditors can increase their focus on expecting colleges to meet stakeholder needs and serve the public good (Ralph Wolff, personal communication, July 17, 2013). Foundations and higher education associations can:
   • Continue to sponsor research on the needs and interests of higher education’s key stakeholders, including current and prospective students and their families, employers, and government policymakers.
   • Continue to facilitate meaningful conversations on how colleges can respond most effectively to concerns about economic development, return on investment, and the changing college student.
   • Educate public stakeholders about the benefits of higher education beyond starting salary, such as lifetime earnings, better opportunities for advancement, and the public good.
   • With employers, address incongruities of pay and job requirements, ensuring that jobs that do not need college-level skills do not require a college degree and that jobs requiring a college degree pay fairly and appropriately.
   • Encourage colleges to identify distinctive goals and relevant measures when it is appropriate to deviate from the norm, while recognizing that standard goals and measures can have value in some circumstances.
2. Encourage and support great teaching and learning. Government policymakers and think tanks can move their focus from assessment and completion to great teaching and learning. Accreditors can require the use of research-informed teaching practices. Disciplinary associations can endorse the scholarship of teaching as a valued form of research. And, when looking at colleges, prospective students can ask for concrete evidence of the use of research-based teaching practices, not just general student satisfaction ratings or unsubstantiated platitudes. Students who “swirl” through multiple colleges and programs can ask about capstone experiences that help make their degrees more than a collection of courses.
3. Put your money where your mouth is. Foundations and donors can all do more to address the five cultures of quality, especially supporting research on and adoption of effective teaching strategies.
4. Fight complacency. Foundations and higher education associations can continue to develop alternatives to the model of quality based on reputation, perhaps building on the work of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability (NLASLA) (2012a). Foundations can continue to provide incentives for evidence-informed innovation. Accreditors can make clear that “closing the loop”—using assessment results for betterment—incorporates external evidence along with the results of assessments of current endeavors.
5. Break down silos. Higher education associations and foundations can foster increased collaboration among higher education sectors and cohorts. College leaders can attend one of the Lilly Conferences on College and University Teaching (http://lillyconferences.com/), for example. Blue-ribbon panels, commissions, and other national conversations on higher education reform, now often limited to what David Longanecker has called “a bunch of important people listening to a bunch of somewhat more important people” (Lederman, 2011) can include teaching faculty, student development professionals, and college assessment directors.

   Accreditors can incorporate into their requirements more explicit expectations for college communities to work collaboratively. Regional accreditors can continue to break down accreditation silos by creating a common base of requirements and expanding common language (ACE, 2012; Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions, 2014; National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity [NACIQI], 2012; Ralph Wolff, personal communication, July 17, 2013). I am not suggesting a merger of the regionals, although a bit of consolidation might have some merit. Having several regional accreditors allows them to operate as think tanks (American Council on Education [ACE], 2012), with each exploring new accreditation processes, others learning from those experiences, and all consequently improving their effectiveness.

6. Tell meaningful stories of higher education’s successes. Higher education associations, foundations, and government policymakers can work together to:
   • Continue to explore ways to share information on college quality that are succinct, relevant to students and other key college stakeholders, and respectful of colleges’ distinctive traits.
   • Help higher education stakeholders easily find information they want or need to see (Jankowski, Ikenberry, Kinzie, Kuh, Shenoy, & Baker, 2012), perhaps scaling back the current mind-numbing array of information sources.
   • Design data systems that collect information on students’ goals upon enrolling in college (for example, do they want to earn a degree, transfer before graduating, or simply bone up on some work-related skills?), update their goals as appropriate, and compare college outcomes against their goals.
   • Develop dashboards of quality that go beyond graduation rates, placement rates, and starting salaries to address the full array of stakeholder needs and the five cultures of quality.

Accreditors can also do more to get out the stories of higher education’s successes. They can continue to work toward providing transparent public information on accreditation concerns and actions. The report of the ACE National Task Force on Institutional Accreditation (American Council on Education [ACE], 2012) offers a number of thoughtful suggestions concerning this.

Accreditors can also work with higher education associations to put accreditation’s success stories into the hands of government policymakers and other stakeholders. Accreditation usually receives media attention under one of two circumstances: when it threatens the removal of a college’s accreditation (or removes it) or when it does not appear to act sufficiently promptly and forcefully on a college that public stakeholders perceive to be of poor quality. These actions are both relatively rare, because most colleges move swiftly and aggressively to address accreditation shortcomings and the vast majority of accreditation actions are sound and appropriate. The actions receiving media attention thus do not provide a balanced picture of what accreditors do. Largely untold are accreditation’s success stories: the hundreds of colleges undergoing review each year whose accreditations are never in jeopardy, but who nonetheless improve their quality and effectiveness through the review process in substantive ways. As Judith Eaton has noted, “The evidence is there, but not adequately marshaled or deployed” (2013, “Reauthorization Options,” para. 3).

Finally, accreditors can communicate the cost of accreditation and its alternatives. U.S. accreditation is not cheap, but any alternative would be far more expensive, because accreditation reviews are now largely conducted by volunteer peer reviewers: dedicated individuals who derive a great deal of satisfaction from working with colleagues at peer colleges to verify and improve quality. Accreditors are, in a sense, low-cost consultants who can offer excellent collegial advice.

If accreditation processes are forced to become more regulatory or complex, however, this model cannot continue. Only the rare volunteers will want to take time from their day jobs to, say, pore through course syllabi to verify that stated learning outcomes are addressed. Take away the rewarding aspects of accreditation review and add in tedious fact-checking, and volunteers will need to be replaced with paid staff at a far higher cost. Accreditors and the higher education community must communicate to government policymakers the costs of more exacting review.

Three More Ideas for Accreditation

I have spent nearly forty years in higher education, and I have never seen a group of people who took their responsibilities more seriously or deliberately than accreditors—and remember that accreditation commissioners and peer reviewers are largely volunteers. Their dedication convinces me that no other system can be more effective in ensuring—and assuring—the quality and effectiveness of U.S. higher education.

That said, some of the concerns about accreditation summarized in Chapter 2 are legitimate. This chapter has already suggested ways that accreditors can help the rest of the higher education community ensure and advance quality and effectiveness, but I have three more ideas that I think are worth exploring.

Take more steps to ensure that peer reviewers are dependably prepared to interpret and apply requirements consistently and appropriately. I do not have a ready answer on how to make this happen, because peer reviewers are largely volunteers with day jobs, and few would have the time for more comprehensive training than accreditors now offer. But a consistent combination of a common core of principles or expectations among the regional accreditors, as suggested earlier, online modules followed by brief learning assessments, and a well-trained assistant chair for each team might go a long way.

Build the reputation of national accreditation as an alternative to regional accreditation. The age and longstanding reputation of many regional accreditors’ member colleges have pushed some colleges to seek regional accreditation when it is not a good fit for them. Not every student needs or wants a liberal arts education, for example. Accreditors and the higher education community can convey more clearly the value of nationally accredited colleges and schools for some students, depending on their interests and needs.

Create a competitive environment for regional accreditation. Schools and colleges of business can choose from among three potential accreditors: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), and the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE). Each has different requirements and attracts different kinds of business programs. AACSB, for example, attracts business schools that emphasize research and scholarship, while IACBE attracts business programs that focus on demonstrating student achievement of learning outcomes.

Regional accreditors might function the same way, with each accrediting any college in the country—or perhaps the world—that meets its requirements. Eventually, there would be a sorting out as colleges chose the accreditor that seemed to be the best fit for them. I would not want to see sector-specific accreditors, but one regional might eventually attract colleges that want a very structured accreditation process, one might attract colleges with non-traditional delivery modes, one might attract colleges that focus on traditional, residential, liberal arts experiences, and so on. Perhaps the time will come when this is an idea worth considering.

Can We Do This?

Absolutely! This book points you to many colleges that are already embracing key components of the five cultures of quality. You, your colleagues, and those throughout higher education can do this. There is no choice; the future of your college, your students, and the higher education enterprise—as well the public good—depend on it.