The Problem of Defining and Communicating Quality in the 21st Century

Abstract

The front page of the September 3, 2010 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education featured the headline “The Quality Question” and was subtitled “Mediocrity Happens” (Glenn). The title caught my attention because the University of Georgia, my home institution, has spent the last two years preparing for reaffirmation of accreditation by the Southern Association of College and Schools (SACS), our regional accrediting organization. The guiding document is “The Principles of Accreditation: Foundations for Quality Enhancement” (http://sacscoc.org/ pdf/2010principlesofacreditation.pdf). For more than 100 years since the founding of the first regional accrediting body in New England, accreditation has served as the overarching practice for defining and assuring quality in institutions of higher education. The UGA compliance report for SACS, which documents that we have met the core requirements for reaffirmation, is over 800 pages in length and includes approximately 2,400 supporting documents totaling close to 15,000 pages! Thousands of hours of faculty and staff time were spent investigating the requirements and documenting the University’s compliance with the SACS core requirements. Next, the compliance report will be reviewed by a peer review committee. Out of this “self-study” came several tangible improvements in areas of strategic planning, distance education, and faculty records to name only three areas. In tandem with the compliance work, another 30+ member committee met throughout the preceding 24 months to develop a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), which is also a part of the reaffirmation process. After much discussion campus-wide, the QEP steering committee decided to focus on the development of a University-wide first-year seminar, labeled the First Year Odyssey. This seminar has the potential to affect every first-year student in critical thinking and writing—the plans are big! As anyone who has participated on an accreditation committee knows, the assessment (selfstudy) process is a fine-grained analysis reporting on multiple dimensions—mission, governance and administration, programs, the faculty, physical resources, student affairs, and so on. The process is an extremely important, high-stakes activity since colleges and universities must be accredited in order to participate in a myriad of federal programs valued in excess of $75 billion. Accreditation studies are occurring on hundreds of campuses across the nation this year, and will occur in the next year, until 10 years have passed and an individual campus repeats the process again. In addition to institutional level accreditation, comprehensive colleges and universities host numerous specialized accreditation visits each year, ranging from Innov High Educ (2010) 35:295–296 DOI 10.1007/s10755-010-9160-x