Syracuse University is awaiting a site visit team to review its recently submitted reaccreditation report that, if approved, will allow SU to continue receiving federal financial aid.

The team is expected to visit the university’s campus from March 25 to 28.

Accreditation is a process that all universities must undergo every 10 years through an external body to determine if a university complies with certain standards. SU is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a nonprofit accreditation organization.

About two years ago, SU began the process of putting together committees to evaluate different objectives set by Middle States, said Rochelle Ford, a chair of the university’s Middle States Reaccreditation Steering Committee.

Standards vary from things such as ethics and integrity policy to the student experience.

“We really used this as an opportunity to make the university better,” Ford said. “Not just check a box and say ‘hey federal government, give us more money for financial aid.’”

SU submitted a final draft of the report in the last month, and the next step is for an external team from Middle States to visit campus and review the university’s report.

One member of the Middle States site visit team has already visited SU and given his own evaluation, with plans to visit the SU campus in Florence, Italy later next month to continue his evaluation, Ford said.

Accreditation agencies are in place to hold universities accountable for what they are meant to be doing and what they say they will do, Ford said.

“One of the things we want to ensure is that students are getting what we said we would deliver to them,” Ford said.

The federal government relies on accreditation agencies, such as Middle States, to evaluate how universities are performing so they can receive federal funding aid.

“In addition, accreditation offers universities an incentive to maintain accountability with the public and to commit to continuous improvement,” said Paul Gaston, trustees professor at Kent State University and an expert on accreditation.

The accreditation process opens doors for innovation by using ideas from peer institutions to better SU, said Mark Milliron, co-founder of Civitas Learning, an organization that analyzes educational institutions. Gaston said that, generally, accreditation is a “prompt for innovation.”

But because this is a subjective process that goes through various committees and teams, disagreements about certain objectives arise, Milliron added.

“The problem is in any time with these human systems you get a conservatism that will slow down innovation,” Milliron said. “At the same time, you also have the ability for universities to push each other in this process and learn from each other.”

Milliron also said the standards of accreditation agencies are laid out clearly for the university to self-evaluate its compliance.

“I think for a place like Syracuse, the biggest thing is just to get that combination of documenting compliance of the standards for the university and showing the direction of where (it’s) going,” Milliron said.

Ford said the committees on the reaccreditation team were able to gather evidence proving various standards set by accreditation.

For example, if SU had a specific mission statement, the evidence in the report would be the university’s mission statement, she said.

“What the self-study process basically is that we look at the standards that Middle States expects us to achieve and then we investigate internally, the university does by itself, how we are meeting those standards,” Ford said.

Last semester, the reaccreditation team sought feedback from students, faculty and staff for its report.

Published on January 16, 2018 at 9:11 pm

Contact Catherine: ccleffer@syr.edu | @ccleffert