Accreditation: Changes Comin'

How does a community college stay in business? By turning out trained, employable workers and transferring students with a solid academic foundation.  To guarantee that, colleges have to earn accreditation, in the case of JALC by a body called the Higher Learning Commission, or HLC.

Until recently, this accreditation process was a monster pain in the ass which took place once every ten years. Huge piles of data were hastily assembled, lightly sifted, and shoved into binders for the campus visitors, administrators from other community colleges. They spent a day or two on campus, talked to a handful of (happy, carefully-screened) employees, and waved the magic accreditation wand.

Well, except for in 2007, shortly after Mees "retired" to start collecting a pension, and immediately returned to work, to collect a paycheck on top. Right, we USED to call that "double-dipping" and it was frowned on. The 2007 report also took place just after the shifty hiring and hasty undeserved promotion of The Sons, both actual promotions and attempted ones. The results of the employee survey were just too shocking to ignore,  which is why there is a "monitoring follow-up get-your-act-together" set of documents from 2009.

You can see all these documents (something that has only been possible since the 2007 visit) by clicking Acreditation at the bottom of the JALC page. They spell out lack of trust in board ethics, lack of communication and transparency, lack of integrity, and terrible morale across every campus group. Same old, same old…

But the HLC has revamped the entire system. Reporting all that data will now happen every other year, followed by a three-day visit to campus to confirm the data.

Lofty goals are spelled out on the college page, at the bottom, in the "Accreditation" link. Click the "John A Logan Acredition" then go to the FAQ. We're thinking this may spell trouble for the college's internal-research guy, who we understand can't write basic programs or otherwise collect meaningful information.

On the other hand, the process COULD mean actual planning will take place, addressing the institutionalized problems noted in the 2007 report, the 2009 "monitoring" follow-up report (erroneously and prematurely saying that everything was all better now), and what we hear is reflected in the latest survey results… stay tuned.