In this chapter, the author contemplates the future of accreditation in the changing landscape of higher education in the United States. He presents a set of proposals for how accreditation can regain the confidence of college leaders and public policymakers. He begins with the assumption that changes in accreditation--some significant in their…

Assessing the quality of undergraduate student learning continues to be a priority in U.S. postsecondary education. Although variations in outcome assessment practices have long been suspected, they have not been systematically documented. To follow up the 2009 National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) report on institutional…

This report examines the contribution of self-evaluation to internal review processes in Scotland's colleges. It identifies the range of methodologies used by colleges, what makes these effective and what needs to improve further. It explores in particular, the extent to which self-evaluation has a positive impact on learners' experiences. The…

Heightened national goals for degree attainment in the United States means increasing prominence for community colleges, which entails greater scrutiny in the form of accountability. Technology and a new generation of accountability measures appropriate to the distinctive community college mission are available to meet this challenge. This article…

Integrating institutional research, outcomes assessment, program review, strategic planning, and accreditation can be a powerful means of creating a culture of evidence-based decision making and continuous improvement. This study examined how this "integrated" model is organized in practice, how such offices began, why this approach was chosen,…

Why should faculty members support efforts on their campuses to assess student learning outcomes? A great deal of ink has been spilled in recent years by a small number of professors and a much larger number of educational administrators arguing for assessment and pleading for greater faculty support of institutional assessment efforts. More…

Self-evaluation is supposed to be a valid, reliable and easy-to-use instrument to commit professionals to external quality assurance. The writing of a self-evaluation report is the first step in most higher education accreditation systems all over the world. Research on accreditation in the Netherlands and Flanders shows that professionals…

Assessment of educational effectiveness provides vitally important feedback to Institutions of Higher Education. It also provides important information to external stakeholders, such as prospective students, parents, governmental and local regulatory entities, professional and regional accrediting organizations, and representatives of the…

Benchmarking within higher education is now relatively commonplace, as institutions increasingly compete directly with one another to improve the overall "quality" of what they do and attempt to establish and better their position among peers as measured against sector standards. The benchmarking of confidence among academic staff in…

In this age of accountability, transparency, and accreditation, colleges and universities increasingly conduct comparative analyses and engage in benchmarking activities. Meant to inform institutional planning and decision making, comparative analyses and benchmarking are employed to let stakeholders know how an institution stacks up against its…

Given the normative changes in higher education at European, national and regional levels, together with social, economic, demographic and technological developments, universities need to adopt a client-oriented approach and to make this client orientation an integral component of their strategic planning process. The university's…

The Top 100 degree tables published in this edition of Diverse, and the many more detailed tables included on the Diverse Web site, delineate the institutions that have conferred the most master's, doctoral and first professional degrees to students of color in academic year 2007-2008. Each table shows the number of degrees for a specific minority…

A questionnaire investigation of academic staff and teaching administrators at Shanghai Normal University and Shanghai Fisheries University shows that the evaluation of the standards of undergraduate teaching work has had positive effects on teaching work and that setting up an evaluation system is an effective measure for assuring the quality of…

In the 1970s and '80s, manufacturing firms began purchasing centralized administrative software--"Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems"--to support their infrastructure needs. In the 1990s, higher education adopted the term ERP to define the back-office systems used by institutions to meet their most pressing business needs--typically those…

According to new research, aspiring professors' negative view of faculty life at top research institutions is common: the large study of the University of California's graduate students revealed that less than half perceive major research institutions to be family-friendly workplaces for tenure-track professors. About 8,400 Ph.D. students from…