Current Trends in Specialized Accreditation

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Current Trends in Specialized Accreditation

• Mary Beth Hanner, PhD, RN
• Vice President for Health Sciences
• Excelsior College
• Albany, NY
• "Professional Accreditation and Certification
  Gateways
• to Quality and Mobility in the Americas"

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Focus of Presentation

• Eleven common trends in specialized accreditation
• Strategies for responding to the trends

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Prescriptive criteria with focus on structure
Trend 1
Student outcomes and program effectiveness
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In other words ..

• from bean counting

a culture of evidence!
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Structure To Outcomes Shifts

• Physical plant
• Seat time and
• clinical hours
• Credentials
• assignments of
• faculty

• The learning environment
• (real, virtual or blended)
• Competency based
• evaluation
• How faculty facilitate
• student learning

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Structure To Outcomes Shifts(Cont)

• How content is
• taught
• Individual courses

How content is learned
Curricular integrity
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Trend 2

• A one-time snapshot
• of the program
• Quality assurance

• Part of a system of program review revision
• Continuous quality improvement

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SAMPLE EVALUATION PLAN
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Trend 3

• Mostly limited to US
• based programs

• Growing international demand for regional
  specialized accreditation

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For Example Middle States Assoc. of Colleges
Schools

• Former Requirement
• Foreign institution must be incorporated in a
  Middle States region (6 states, D.C., Virgin
  Islands and Puerto Rico).

• Current Requirement
• No geographical criteria. Schools in
  Britain, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, Italy,
  Lebanon, Switzerland and UAE.

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Trend 4

• Tended to discourage educational innovation

• More acceptance and encouragement of
  experimentation and innovation

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Trend 5

• Site visitors as
• inspectors

• Site visitors as
• peer experts

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Trend 6

• Mandatory accreditation
• to meet state or
• licensing regulations

• A voluntary
• recognition of
• program quality

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Trend 7

• Expanding numbers who want discipline-
  specific accreditation

• Limited number of
• specialized accreditors

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Association of Specialized and Professional
Accreditors

• www.aspa-usa.org
• Over 50 member accrediting groups

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Examples of Disciplines with Specialized
Accreditation

• Medicine
• Nursing
• Music
• Pharmacy
• Physical Therapy
• Teaching
• Technology
• Social Work

• Allied Health
• Architecture
• Business
• Counseling
• Dance
• Informatics
• Marriage and Family Therapy

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Trend 8

• Viewed as worth the
• time and money

• Cost has surpassed
• the value

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Criticism

• Focus has been on compliance and inspection, not
  program improvement
• Some allied health schools undergo as many as 25
  different reviews!

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Trend 9

• Individualized data
• sets for each
• accrediting body

• Common data
• collection procedures
• data sets

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If Regionally Accredited

• defacto acceptance of
• institutional mission
• strategic plan
• affirmative action programs
• library resources
• faculty governance

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Trend 10

• One specific
• accreditor for each
• discipline

• Competition
• (e.g., Business Nursing)

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For Example

• Nursing
• 40 years - National League for Nursing was the
  sole regional accrediting agency for nursing
  programs
• 1998 Commission on Collegiate
• Nursing Education

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Trend 11

• 6 months to 1 year preparation of
• self-study

• Demonstration of a culture of evidence and
  CQI

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