Institutional Effectiveness Criteria Established

I.E. Presentation 10/31/07

The Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) brought a new emphasis to the process of institutional accreditation through approval of Section III of the Criteria for Accreditation back in the mid to late 1980s. This section represented an expansion of the process to emphasize the results of education and to focus on the extent to which the institution used assessment information to reevaluate goals, to make essential improvements, and to plan for the future.



SACS began a revision of the accreditation process in the late 1990s with approval being granted in December 2001 for The Principles of Accreditation: Foundations for Quality Enhancement. Institutional effectiveness is still at the heart of the new process with one core requirement and multiple comprehensive standards focusing on assessment, evaluation and use of results for institutional improvement.