There’s a lot to think about when choosing a college. The reputation of the school, quality of the degree programs, faculty qualifications, library and information services, student services and extracurricular activities are all things students and their parents want to know before making their final decision. Students also know it’s important to attend an accredited college. But what is “accreditation,” how does it work, and why is it important to select a college that is accredited?

Accreditation is a process of quality control that ensures an institution is authorized by the appropriate local or state governing organizations and approved by the state’s department of education. Accreditation also ensures that a college operates in a sound, ethical manner as determined by the institution’s ability to comply with a series of criteria established by the accrediting agency. In the United States, peer review is the foundation of accreditation. The quality of educational programs is monitored by private, nongovernmental organizations established specifically for this purpose. Accrediting organizations are approved by the US Department of Education or recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) which is authorized by the Department of Education to approve accrediting organizations.

There are three basic types of organizations approved to award accredited status:  Regional, National and Programmatic.  National accreditation includes career and faith related accreditation programs. National career-related organizations recognized by CHEA include the Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) and the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) Accreditation Commission.  Four faith-related accreditation programs are approved by CHEA including, for example, the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE).  Programmatic accreditation is specific to the academic course of study and generally sponsored by a professional organization. The American Association of Medical Assistants (AAMA), American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) are examples of programmatic accrediting organizations.  Unlike national accreditation which is based on career interest or faith-base, regional accreditation is based on geographic location of the approved institution.  There are six regional accrediting organizations:  Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA), New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NCCU), Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)

The accreditation self-study process is a rigorous, objective assessment validated by other professionals. Students who select an accredited institution and their parents can know that the college meets quality standards and conducts its business in an ethical manner.

The accreditation process begins with a self-study which covers everything from the institution’s ability to provide a quality educational program to how it publishes information about itself. Generally conducted by a committee of faculty and administrators, self-study results in a report that compares the school to certain criteria developed by the accrediting agency.  The self-study report reflects how the institution measures up against the criteria outlined by their accrediting body. A visiting team is recruited by the accrediting agency from among its member institutions to go to the college and evaluate the validity of the self-study report. The team prepares a summary report that outlines how well the institution meets the accreditation criteria. Based on this report, the accrediting agency determines if the institution will be accredited.

When an institution is accredited, it becomes eligible to offer certain federal or state grants and loans to its students which are not available at non-accredited institutions. Many state licensure examinations require that those taking the licensing exams have completed an accredited program.

A complete list of CHEA approved accrediting organizations/commissions can be viewed at http://www.chea.org/Directories/

For more information about accreditation or to access a database of accredited institutions listed by the department of education visit the US Department of Education’s search site at http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.asp

Marylin Newell is the founder and lead consultant for College Matters, an Executive Coaching and Consulting firm specializing in higher education. More information about College Matters and additional articles on topics of interest in higher education are available at www.collegematters.us

Everything seems to hang in the balance when a college is going through the accreditation process.  Whether it is seeking initial accreditation or renewing its award through a five or ten year accreditation review, accreditation revolves around the self-study which is both process and narrative.  Consider that the narrative report that represent’s the school’s self-study process may be the more instrumental of the two components when it comes to convincing an accrediting commission of the institution’s ability to meet the standards established for approving accreditation.

Accreditation is said to be a voluntary, peer-review process; however, without accreditation (whether national, regional or programmatic) a college is not eligible for its students to receive Title IV financial aid, and its graduates may not be eligible for some professional certifications that require completion of a program of study from an accredited institution.  The question of peer-review in many cases is a loose application of the nature of peer institutions.  For example, in most commissions, two-year career colleges are members with equal status (at least from an accreditation vantage point) with four-year colleges and with those that award professional degrees beyond the baccalaureate degree.  The criteria are often the same for all institutions regardless of level of degree or the subject areas in which degrees are offered.

Given all that rests on becoming (or retaining) accredited status and the nature of the peers by which an institution  may be reviewed, how a college tells the story of its self-study is an important factor in its ability to achieve the requisite approval from the visiting team and accreditation commissioners who review the school from a distance based on their own self-study report and the corresponding report of the visiting team that reviews the college through a site visit aimed at validating that what the school has reported in its self-study report matches what an objective (albeit industry savvy) observer finds in a brief but intense site visit. The narrative (the school’s self-study report) is the thread that ties the process the school engages in when it studies its current practices as they compare to the accreditation criteria.

In very simplistic terms, the self-study process is a cycle of events all reflected in narrative form.  The accrediting commission establishes guidelines (generally called criteria or standards of accreditation) in a number of critical areas common to the operation of all institutions of higher education.  NEASC, for example has criteria that address the institution’s mission and purpose, evaluation and planning, organization and governance, the academic program, faculty, students, library and other information resources, physical and technological resources, financial resources, public disclosure and integrity.  Each category has specific standards that the college must meet in order to gain accreditation.  And so the process begins.

Ideally, through a collegiate and college-wide process of self-examination, discussion, reflective evaluation and planning for remediation, the college begins to study itself by comparing their operation to the narrative expectations of the criteria.  The language of the criteria is carefully crafted to address the nature of the vast variety of higher education institutions with their distinctly different cultures, characteristics, and missions.  It is the institution’s responsibility to be able to demonstrate compliance with each (and every) section, to identify strengths and areas of concern, and to articulate a plan of action for continuous self-improvement.  The institution’s ability to effectively capture (in narrative form) how well it meets the criteria—and how carefully it can articulate what it intends to do in areas where it believes improvement is needed without inadvertently implying that it does not meet the requirement.

The accreditation review team, the group of peers that reviews the institution’s self-study report and then conducts an intense on-site examination of the evidence compiled by the institution to document how it meets the criteria, also observes the institution in its daily operation to verify that what is reflected in the self-study report.  Interviews with members of the college community (students, faculty, administrators, and advisory and governing board members) and often members of the community are used to validate the review team’s observations.  What the team observes and its interpretation of how closely what it sees agrees with what the institution represented in its self-study report is reflected in a report of the site visit that (after it is fully compiled and edited by the visit chairperson) is shared with the college administration.  The college has an opportunity to challenge any factual statements in the review team’s report with which it disagrees, adjustments (if appropriate) are made, and the final report of the self-study review team along with the institution’s self-study report are forwarded to the accrediting organization’s commissioner for final review.  It is this compilation of documentation—which often includes the college’s publications and any correspondence between the college president and the review team chairperson.

Each commission has a slightly different process following the collection of the materials, most of which include an interview by commissioners of the college president (and any college representatives the president has included in the interview).  The question and answer format is intended to allow opportunities for commissioners to clarify their understanding of any discrepancies between the institution’s narrative and that of the review team and often includes a brief interview with the review team chairperson.  These comprise an oral narrative that serves to further reinforce the congruence (or discrepancies) in the collective written narratives.  Regardless the details of their individual processes, each commission considers the written materials and subsequent information gathered by them through the usually brief interview with the college president.  It is this collection of narratives upon which the final decision of the commission rests regarding the college’s ability to meet the standards of accreditation.

The concept of narrative can also be termed story telling.  In the accreditation process, it is important how the institution initially tells its story.  Great care must be taken to ensure the story the self-study report tells reflects the criteria in language that demonstrates its full understanding of the content and intent of the initial narrative (criteria). Adequate information needs to be provided to the review team to facilitate them telling their story in ways that are consistent with the college’s story, so the commissioners (who have likely not visited the college or seen the supporting documentation) have confidence that both the college and the review team are telling the same story.

To ensure the integrity of the self-study process (and correspondingly the accreditation process), the stories told must ring true for everyone involved.  It is the homogeny of the stories that ultimately enables the self-study committee, college community, accreditation review team, and commissioners to agree the school has met the criteria and deserves to be awarded a grant of accreditation that endorses the college as a legitimate entity in the higher education industry.

A complete list of CHEA approved accrediting organizations/commissions can be viewed at http://www.chea.org/Directories/

For more information about accreditation or to access a database of accredited institutions listed by the department of education visit the US Department of Education’s search site at http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.asp

Marylin Newell is the founder and lead consultant for College Matters, an Executive Coaching and Consulting firm specializing in higher education. More information about College Matters and additional articles on topics of interest in higher education are available at www.collegematters.us

First, a few statistics to demonstrate why college administrators should consider social networks for connecting with prospective and current students. According to a recent report on social networking demographics available at marketinghub.info (they used Facebook member demographics as the sample population), 84% of the 22 million people in the US using Facebook are 14-26 years old. Forty-seven percent (47%) are currently high school or college students (I could not locate the breakdown of this statistic, but it would be interesting to know how many of them are high school students since for most colleges/universities that is our target market. The report also noted that 55% of these users are female. The short—and somewhat unscientific—interpretation of these statistics is: If you recruit traditional age students, they are hanging out in significant numbers on Facebook (and probably on other social networks in similar proportions).

Until I attended the Social Media Marketing seminar last week, I saw Facebook as my friends and family network. I have tried to preserve that distinction by referring people who found my listing there and wanted to connect to LinkedIn, which I saw as my professional network. I post items of interest about my hobbies and family events on Facebook, while my updates on LinkedIn are based on projects and activities related to my career. After careful consideration—and looking at the demographics on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I will likely reconsider my initial decision to separate the two in that way. Here’s my reasoning based on data pulled from http://www.quantcast.com.

Total Users
Facebook – 90.8 million users as of July 17, 2009 (all are US users)
Twitter – 26.5 million users as of June, 2009 (all are US users)
LinkedIn – 31.4 million users as of July 17, 2009 (10.9 million are US users)

Age
Facebook – 23.6 million are over 34
Twitter – 13.2 million are over 34
LinkedIn – 8 million are over 34

Education
Facebook has 50.8 million users with a college degree (42%) or graduate degree (14%)
Twitter has 15.1 million users with a college degree (43%) or graduate degree (14%)
LinkedIn has 8.7 million users with a college degree (52%)* or graduate degree (28%)* OR LinkedIn college and graduate degree holders could be as few as 2.4 million users

Missing Data
There is no way to know from the available data what percentage of the US population in each site works in higher education, nor is there a way to know what portion of the LinkedIn users with college and graduate degrees are US users.

Assumptions
The assumptions I make about my target population are that senior managers are more apt to be in the over-34 age range and hold a college or graduate degree.

Conclusion
Based on my assumptions, Facebook would be the better social networking option for potentially reaching my target market because it has more users overall, more users in the over-34 age range, and more users with college or graduate degrees than Twitter or LinkedIn.

(By the way, if you are a statistician and my thumbnail assessment is seriously flawed, I’d love to hear from you! I realize it is not a sophisticated set of assumptions; however, given what data is available, it seemed to make sense.)

Once you decide what your typical student’s demographic profile is, you can decide which social network is most likely to reach the highest number of those people and begin your adventure into connecting with students through social networking with that site.

The accreditation self-study report is the book you write to tell the story about your school. The visiting team reads the book and visits the campus to “see the movie”. The extent to which those two experiences match is the single most influential factor in how the team reports back to the commission on your behalf. The team reads the self-study report before arriving on campus. When the team arrives they are seeking to validate their interpretation of your self-study report and are concerned with the congruence between your report, their experience of your school, and how you present your school in the trailers (all the written materials that represent your institution–catalog, website, advertisements, etc.).

The consistency between the story you tell in your publications (the trailers), the narrative in the self-study report (the book), and the team’s experience of your school during their visit (the movie) is often the only thing commissioners actually know about your school when they make their final determination to award accreditation because the only information often available to commissioners is what is inclided in the team’s report and your self-study.

If my theory is correct, the primary concern during the self-study itself is ensuring collateral materials presented to the team are current, fairly represent the institution’s current practices, and are reflected in the language and tone of the self-study report. You will also want to ensure that what the team experiences while on campus is what they would expect to find based on the expectations they created from reading the materials you provided. Make sure the movie and the book mirror each other and that the trailers adequately represent both.

Consumer behavior theory of student departure: Advancing a theory
studentdeparture—the decision by students not to persist in their academic pursuit—is a complex phenomenon. College administrators and researchers have been relentless in their quest to understand why students who begin attending colleges drop out at notably high rates. According to Braxton, Hirschy and McClendon (2004), 45% of two-year college students and 25% of four-year college students leave college before completing their first year (p. 1). For nearly three-quarters of a century, researchers have advanced and tested theories intended to explain why some students and not others decide to leave college before achieving their personal goals.

The following theory of student departure has evolved over nearly 20 years of first hand experience with college students in three associate degree granting career colleges located in New England. Each of the schools operated as a for-profit business. The ownership structure varied from closely held private corporations to a major publicly traded company. This context is significant because the theory of student departure espoused here emanates from a consumer model of higher education. In this for-profit perspective, student and customer are synonymous. Some might argue, “the consumer model of higher education is fraught with both intellectual and moral problems” (Potts, 2005, p. 55); however, there are significant flaws in Potts’ logic (a discussion that is beyond the scope of this paper).

This consumer-oriented theory of student departure is grounded in the traditional theory of student choice—a theory that explains the developmental process involved in a student’s decision to attend college, influences his/her choice of colleges and follow-through on the enrollment commitment. By showing the relationship between student choice theory, buyer behavior, and student retention theories, this paper posits that student departure is a consumer decision. This student departure theory has not been tested for validity or generalizability; however, in practice, programs have been developed through the lens of this theory that have resulted in improved student retention in all three institutions.

The Consumer Behavior Theory of Student Departure

The consumer behavior theory of student departure can be summarized as follows: Students leave colleges before completing their programs of study because they are unable to reaffirm their initial buying decision.

Students experience a variety of influences throughout their lifetime that lead them to make the decision to attend college and help them to determine which college to attend, which program to take, what extracurricular activities to participate in and other college related choices. This series of decisions constitutes a complex buying decision. Each time the student has an opportunity to revisit the decision by enrolling for subsequent terms or by deciding whether to withdraw before the end of an enrollment period, the student revisits his/her original buying decision. When the student’s college experience is not congruent with his/her expectations, does not provide the benefits s/he anticipated, or in some other way fails to validate the decision to attend college (essentially, does not result in student/customer satisfaction), the student opts to withdraw (or fails to re-enroll). Essentially, the decision is not to buy again. It is important, then that the student’s buying decision be affirmed by his/her experience. Understanding the factors that lead students to their initial enrollment decision is key to developing programs for decreasing the instances of premature student departure (that is, improving student retention).
This paper seeks to define the consumer behavior theory of student departure by explaining student college choice theory and drawing a comparison between student choice, consumer buying behavior and certain elements of more traditional retention theories.

Student College Choice Theory and Buying Behavior

To understand why students leave colleges without completing their programs, it is important to understand the process through which students make the initial choice to attend college. Student college choice theory, student choice, and consumer buying behavior (buying behavior) aid in understanding this process. DesJardins (2002) summarizes the student choice literature noting that “student enrollment behavior is related to students’ individual characteristics and their preferences about the institution(s) they are considering” (p. 533). According to student choice theory, there are three stages in the decision process: college aspirations, college choice, and college admission and matriculation (DesJardins, 2002). These three stages can be matched to the three stages of complex buying behavior during which consumers are developing beliefs, developing attitudes, and making buying decisions (Kotler, 2003). It is not difficult to draw the comparison between the student choice process and buying behavior: College aspirations=developing beliefs, college choice=developing attitudes, and college admission/matriculation=making buying decisions.

In the student choice cycle, students who follow the traditional college path begin to form college aspirations very early in life. It is then that they begin developing beliefs about the value of education and career aspirations. In this early stage, students are highly influenced by cultural, social, demographic and psychographic factors. This stage of the student choice cycle generally occurs during the student’s formative years, a time when critical values are being transmitted to children from their birth families including their perception of achievement and success. How students relate their aspirations for achievement and success to the college experience is influenced by subcultural factors including race, religion and geographic region (Kotler, 2003). This first stage of student choice (college aspirations) is the context-specific illustration of the first stage of buying behavior (developing beliefs).

The second stage of student choice generally develops during the student’s last two years of high school (DesJardins, 2002). During this developmental phase, students are developing attitudes about college attendance and are most likely influenced by the social factors of reference, membership, aspirational and dissociative groups (Kotler, 2003). According to Kotler, reference groups are those people who have some influence over a person’s attitudes and can impact their behaviors (e.g. family), while membership groups (e.g. peers) have more direct influence. Further influence in this second stage may come from school guidance counselors or teachers acting in the role of opinion leaders (Kotler, 2003). This student choice stage mirrors the second stage of buying behavior where students/consumer begin developing attitudes, in this case about college attendance and the colleges themselves. It is in this second stage of the student choice buying decision that students begin to apply to the colleges they have identified as preferred colleges.

The third stage in the student choice process is the point at which the student actually makes the buying (college choice) decision (DesJardins, 2002). Most colleges experience a gap between the number of applicants who are accepted and the number who actually enroll in the institution. Three primary factors account for this lack of follow through on the initial buying decision: The attitude of others, unanticipated situational factors and perceived risk. Furthermore, any one of five post purchase sub decisions is likely to influence the student’s commitment to enroll in a particular institution (Kotler, 2003).
Not all students follow the traditional path from high school directly into college. Non-traditional students include those over 24 years old who decide to attend college for the first time and adults who decide to go to college to improve their work place skills or train for a new career. Although these prospective students are likely to have experienced the same student choice phases early in life, demographic factors including age, family size, family life cycle, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, nationality and social class are most likely to influence the prospective student’s buying decision for non-traditional students. For both traditional and non-traditional students, psychographic factors are likely to further influence the buying behavior including lifestyle, personality, values, occasions, benefits, and attitude (Kotler, 2003).

That the student college choice decision is a buying decision is clear from this brief description. Consumer buying decisions are developed over time as beliefs and attitudes are applied to the decision-making process. This is consistent with the developmental stages of student choice theory. Many of the same factors that influence student choice and buyer behavior have been proposed as contributing factors in several student retention theories. These retention theories are summarized below.

Student Retention Theory

Researchers have advanced multiple theories about why students leave colleges. Cook (2005) and Seidman (2005) summarize those theories which are further summarized here: Academic achievement and financial considerations (Hoke, 1922; Tallman, 1927; Iffert, 1957; Ivey, 1966), socioeconomic background and student involvement (Astin, 1964, 1977, 1985; Swell and Shah, 1967), personal attributes of students (Summerskill, 1962; Astin, 1964; Heilbrun, 1965), student expectation of persistence (Marks, 1967), expectation/experience congruence (Shaw, 1968), institutional characteristics (Kamens, 1971, 1974), “nonintellective” variables (Morrisey, 1971), student attitude and faculty interaction (Pascarella and Terenzini 1977, 1978, 1979), person-environment fit (Spady, 1971; Witt & Handal, 1984), academic satisfaction/performance/extracurricular involvement (Aitken, 1982), academic achievement compared to high school (Getzalf, 1984), undeclared major (Gordon, 1985), environmental factors including assimilation (Bean and Metzner, 1985; Christie and Premoy, 1991), academic and social integration (Spady, 1971; Tinto, 1975, 1993; Braxton, 1988), loans/grants/scholarships (St.John, 1989; Cabrera, 1992), peer group (Astin, 1993; Carroll, 1988; Dukes & Gaither, 1984; Faughn, 1982; Johnson & Chapman, 1980; Mallinckrodt, 1988; Malinckrodt & Sedlacek, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991), ethnicity and social integration process (Marguia, Padilla, and Pavel, 1991), family support (Allen, 1994), extent of personal and emotional adjustment (Gerdes, 1994), and being a first-generation student (Riehl, 1994).
Among those theories presented in A Retention Theory Primer (Cook, 2005), Spady (1971) and Tinto (1975, 1993) have components that most closely resonate with the theory of student departure advanced here. Spady (1971) points to socioeconomic factors and student compatibility with the institutional environment. Tinto attributes “background characteristics (e.g., social status, high school experiences, neighborhood, etc.), expectations, and motivational attributes individuals bring to college [as] important factors” (Cook, 2005, p. 7) having significant influence on student persistence. “The greater the congruence between the student’s values, goals, and attitudes and those of the college, the more likely that the student will persist at the college” (Seidman, 2001).

Conclusion

It is this concept of congruence that ties together the concepts of student choice, buying decision and student departure (retention theory). The convergence of these seemingly disparate theories allows us to draw different conclusions that will be useful in developing retention strategies. Student’s values, goals, and attitudes influence the student college choice. Student college choice is a consumer transaction. As consumers, students will evaluate their experience of college in much the same way they evaluate other consumer decisions. When students choose to enroll or not enroll in each subsequent term they are reaffirming (or denying) their previous commitments and buying decisions. Retention at its very core is a continuous buying decision. Students’ decisions to continue correlate to their initial decision to attend. To understand why students depart—and more importantly, to influence student retention—attrition must be viewed and addressed as a consumer decision. Institutions viewing students attrition through this new paradigm will see the value of customer service and customer satisfaction and will develop programs to address these concerns, and by doing so, will address the myriad of student concerns addressed in the retention literature.

References

Braxton, J.M., Hirschy, A.S., and McClendon, S.A. (2004). Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report. 30 (3). Adrianna J. Kezar, Editor.
Cook, J. (2005). A Retention Primer. Minneapolis, MN: Capella University
DesJardins, S.L. (2002). An analytic strategy to assist institutional recruitment and marketing efforts. Research in Higher Education 43(5). Retrieved November 8, 2006, from ERIC EJ655973
Kotler, P (2003). Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Potts, M. (June 2005). The Consumerist Subversion of Education. Academic Questions. 18(3). Retrieved January 20, 2007. Academic Search Premier. AN 20917994.
Seidman, A. (1989). Recruitment begins with retention: Retention begins with recruitment. Colleague. State University of New York, 40-45.