Accreditation of higher education institutions in the United States is a voluntary and self-regulatory mechanism of the higher education community. It plays a significant role in fostering public confidence in the educational enterprise, in maintaining standards, in enhancing institutional effectiveness, and in improving higher education. It also provides the basis on which colleges and universities can be assured that accredited institutions have complied with a common set of requirements and standards.
By choosing to seek and maintain accreditation, an institution agrees to submit its operations and policies to periodic review and reaffirmation in an intense, multi-year process of self-assessment, report-writing, and campus visits by reviewers from other similar institutions. Only those which pass this scrutiny can continue to claim their status as accredited institutions.
Being accredited is essential for colleges and universities, and indirectly for the students who attend them, because:
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) is the officially recognized accrediting agency for higher education institutions in 11 states in the southeastern United States and in Latin America. Its mission is to ensure that appropriate and high quality educational practices are followed by the institutions it accredits.
SACSCOC's original adoption of the Principles of Accreditation in 2001 introduced significant changes in its approach to accreditation. While it had previously emphasized a uniform set of standards which every institution was expected to measure up to in exactly the same ways, SACSCOC's new approach looks at the quality of institutions within the framework of their own mission and goals and whether or not their responses to crucial institutional issues are consistent with their stated mission. In the few years this approach has been enforced, SACSCOC has prompted institutions coming up for re-accreditation (Reaffirmation is actually now the preferred term.) within its region to refocus on the notion of institutional effectiveness and find new and better ways to create and sustain campus environments that enhance student learning.
The additional fine-tuning reflected in the 2007 Interim Edition of the Principles of Accreditation of this document reiterates the importance of these changes and serves to illustrate SACSCOC's own commitment to ongoing assessment and its willingness to engage in continuous improvement.
There are four paramount concepts on which the success of the accreditation process depends.
The accreditation process also assumes that all participants in the process will conduct their responsibilities with integrity, objectivity, fairness, and confidentiality. It is also based on the expectation that accredited institutions have made a commitment to: