jimjom wrote:Is that something that puts its status in the American Association of Universities?
The warning was issued by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Universities, a regional body that oversees the standards of higher ed and degree programs in the "middle states," PA, MD, NJ, et al. There are Middle States oversight bodies for primary and secondary schools, also.
I may be naive, but I don't get this, and I'm going to ask someone I know at the school where I work. Can anyone else here shed any light on this?
Accreditation essentially deals with assessment of whether a school attains and sustains certain educational standards (academic rigor, depth and breadth of major requirements, requirements for graduation, who is teaching the students and how, etc.). An article about this in today's online
Chronicle of Higher Education mentions that the accreditation board wants to make sure the PSU's finances and governance standards meet academic accreditation standards. I don't see how their ability to do so now is deficient compared to the last time PSU was up for reaccreditation, horrible scandal or no horrible scandal.
This brings me back to the Freeh report. I'm surprised that Middle States, an
academic body, cites this particular report as basis for the warning. While the report attempts to present an exhaustive postmortem as to what happened, it does not pass the necessary tests for soundness in methodology and in drawing conclusions on which policy (especially punitive) may be devised and enacted. Many of my colleagues across higher ed and I maintain this stance.
