Administrators, faculty, and scholars who study higher education know that the value of higher education has come under scrutiny over the past few years. While the debate had centered around the perceived liberal influence of faculty on students, we now see highly visible battles taking place on both sides of the political aisle, whether it is protecting free speech rights of students and faculty, the use of pronouns, or our effort to eradicate racism from our institutions. Over the past few months, we’ve seen a new front opening on the national and state political landscape regarding education — institutional accreditation.
Liam Knox, a writer for Inside Higher Ed, published an article in May 2023 that claimed that “college accreditors became the latest target of conservatives’ efforts to upend higher education when former president — and 2024 presidential candidate — Donald Trump announced his plan to “fire” the agencies because the accreditors have failed to protect students from the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” who he believes have taken over higher ed.” Since then, some governors and state legislatures have taken up the charge and have been actively trying to undermine the public’s confidence in the accreditation process.
While accreditation appears to have become another point of discussion in the political and cultural wars, I am a strong proponent of the accreditation process that governs California community colleges. I believe that the accreditation process, in our state led by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), is an important tool for institutions to demonstrate to the public that accredited institutions meet acceptable levels of quality.
The ACCJC’s accreditation standards adopted in 2014 state, “the primary purpose of an ACCJC–accredited institution is to foster student learning and student achievement. An effective institution ensures that its resources, programs, and services, whenever, wherever, and however delivered, support student learning and achievement. The effective institution ensures academic quality and continuous improvement through ongoing assessment of learning and achievement and pursues institutional excellence and improvement through ongoing, integrated planning and evaluation.”
Accreditation is not partial but applies to College of the Redwoods as a whole. It is a critical, transparent reflection, year after year, on how successful we are at meeting our mission, demonstrating that students are meeting relevant learning outcomes, and leaving CR prepared for the next stage of their journey. It is not a guarantee of every course or program offered, or the competence of individual graduates. Rather, it provides reasonable assurance about the quality of opportunities available to students who attend CR.
What implications are there for a college whose accreditation status has been jeopardized? In the most extreme situations, loss of accredited status, there would be myriad long-ranging repercussions. Students who attended would no longer have access to federal financial aid. Degrees earned from the institution would hold little value to employers and disqualify students from attending a university. Many, if not most, schools that lose accreditation end up closing, and the cost to the surrounding community is great.
Institutions undergo a comprehensive accreditation review process every few years and our time has come again. A team of peer reviewers will begin by compiling our Institutional Self-Evaluation Report (ISER) in spring 2024 that will document our strengths and opportunities for improvement, assess our innovation in relation to accreditation standards and our mission, and make an honest assessment of CR’s sustained alignment with standards, the quality and effectiveness of our programs, services, and practices; and the degree to which the institution is meeting our goals for student learning and achievement. It is also an opportunity to identify areas where we can improve.
To allow the college sufficient time to prepare for the ISER, we started the self-evaluation process in spring 2022 shortly after our 2021 midterm report was accepted by the ACCJC. We want to give every staff, student, faculty, and management member an opportunity to review and comment on the ISER next month. In fall 2024, CR will host an onsite visit comprised of ACCJC peer reviewers from our sister institutions that will confirm that CR complies with the requirements in the ACCJC’s standards of accreditation.
I am proud to say that our board of trustees, faculty, staff, managers, and administrators take our accreditation status with the utmost seriousness as a foundational aspect of how we best serve our students and our community. College of the Redwoods is a much better institution for doing the work necessary to ensure that we continue to meet the standards set by the ACCJC and remain accredited.
We are committed to demonstrating to the public that we have the resources, programs, services, and governance structure sufficient to accomplish and sustain our mission. I want to share a link to our accreditation documents if you want to know more: https://www.redwoods.edu/accreditation/
Dr. Keith Flamer is the president of the College of the Redwoods.
