The English higher education (HE) system is deeply stratified, with younger students from more privileged backgrounds comprising the majority of the student population. Over the last 15 years considerable investment has been made to widen participation but attempts to evaluate these initiatives and demonstrate impact have presented a major…

Since the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) launched the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) in 2011, accountability measures have sprung up in just about every corner of higher education. There is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the National Governors Association's Complete to Compete program,…

This chapter describes how assessment of co-curricular student learning outcomes can be used as part of the institutional accreditation process and the opportunities institutional researchers and student affairs educators have to collaborate in those efforts.

Every college struggles to create processes of quality assurance and continuous improvement to demonstrate and ensure its service to students and community. Accreditation is one avenue that ensures some uniformity across many institutions in the eyes of the public. While this paper focuses on accreditation processes and meeting the needs of…

A critical step in the professionalization of the field of leadership education (Komives, 2011) and the evolution of leadership as a field of study (International Leadership Association [ILA], 2009) is the development of best practices, standards of practice, and guidelines for assessment of quality in program delivery and accomplishment of…

This article presents a way in which the innovative Nature Therapy conceptual framework coupled with creative therapeutic methods can help children develop resilience and support their coping with uncertainty and stress. It refers to the Safe Place programme that took place in 110 Israeli kindergartens, helping over 6000 children after the Second…

In the author's position as director of institutional effectiveness and currently as a department assessment chair, he relates that he has found it useful to use an analogy between flossing one's teeth and instituting assessment. There are more similarities between flossing and assessment than one might imagine. In this article, the author…

The purpose of this article is to identify key ways in which program review provides information and documentation demonstrating that a community college is effective. This is accomplished through both the program review process (the means by which reviews are conducted) and the product (program review reports and supporting evidence). The various…

Federal officials plan to overhaul the reporting requirements for higher education-based teacher preparation in favor of leaner, outcome-based indicators of program quality, according to plans outlined in the president's fiscal 2012 budget request. To bolster the overhaul, the budget also proposes a $185 million new formula grant program, dubbed…

The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), a commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), accredits Wyoming's seven community colleges. Institutional accreditation is a voluntary process that serves the critical purposes of quality assurance and institutional and program improvement. Colleges that are accredited by the HLC…

In this article, the authors offer a descriptive essay outlining the framework and processes of a five-year institutional renewal effort at Bank Street College of Education. Extended the opportunity to participate in the "Teachers for a New Era" (TNE) initiative, a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to enhance and "radically…

Evaluation and accountability are two of the most popular catchwords employed by higher education reformers in the Western world over the last 25 years. For 25 years governments throughout Western countries have been using evaluation and institutional accountability as policy tools to steer their university systems at a distance. From a…

In contrast to the long-standing history of assessment in secular higher education, religious institutions have not been at the cutting edge of assessment, evaluation, and research. However, external pressures on institutions have led to a self-examined life, use of reliable indicators of institutional performance, and development of comprehensive…

The authors review the unique characteristics of nonprofit organizations and explain how nonprofit organizations play a prominent role in providing today's public services. The authors describe how the field of professional evaluation developed in response to government performance-based management initiatives, noting that recent efforts at the…

Evaluative statements from alumni have legitimacy with both internal and external stakeholders. Thus, alumni studies can provide valuable evidence of institutional effectiveness and lend themselves to both locally designed and commercial survey instruments for data collection. Under ideal conditions, the results of alumni studies equip faculty and…