A regional accrediting agency has placed Black River Technical College on probation because it did not meet three criteria related mostly to assessing student learning.
The Higher Learning Commission, a regional accrediting agency based in Chicago, sanctioned the Pocahontas community college, citing the three failed criteria and another five in which the college is at risk of failing. The two-year school has been working on the deficiencies all along but had not been documenting the efforts, said Karen Liebhaber, the college’s vice president of institutional advancement.
The college must provide evidence to the commission that it has worked on those criteria by July 1, 2018, and host an on-site visit no later than September 2018. The commission will decide in February 2019 whether to remove the probation or order further sanctions. The college will remain accredited in the meantime.
Accreditation is tied to a college or university’s ability to receive federal financial aid for students. About 70 percent of the college’s 1,430 students are eligible for federal Pell grants, money reserved for low-income students that does not need to be repaid. Students pursuing certain careers, such as nursing, also must have a degree from an institution certified by a federally recognized accreditor, said Antoinette Flores, senior policy analyst on the postsecondary education team at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
“For many years, developing a comprehensive student learning outcomes assessment plan has been a significant challenge for Black River,” college President Eric Turner said in a letter to the campus community. “During the past two years, the College has made significant progress towards ameliorating the noted concerns of [the commission].
“New faculty leadership, outcomes assessment committee restructuring, and the recent adoption of a new strategic plan all contribute to our rapid progress. Every noted concern has either been resolved or is on target to be resolved within the two-year timeline allotted by the Higher Learning Commission.”
The commission has accredited Black River since 1997, according to the commission’s website.
In 2002, the college asked for an “institutional change” to add a campus in Paragould. At the time, the commission accredited the college — including its new campus — for a decade, still listing four concerns, including implementation of classroom assessments for student learning, according to the college’s 2012 self-study for the commission.
Black River put together a five-pronged response, which included an initiative for peer observation, professional assessment training and use of benchmark tests to measure student learning, the self-study states.
Ten years later, the school hosted the commission for its scheduled review, in which it asked for — and received — approval for distance-education courses and programs. At the same time, the commission renewed Black River’s accreditation for another decade but also mandated interim monitoring, with a report due to the agency by October 2015.
In 2011, though, the school began undergoing changes in its leadership. Its president and chief academic officer, both of whom had been with the college for more than 30 years, had retired, spurring turnover at the senior administrative level for the next few years, Liebhaber said. The college had cycled through another president before Turner was chosen president in 2014.
By its midcycle review last year, the college was again struck for its assessment of student learning. And in February, the commission put the school on probationary status.
According to the commission, Black River did not demonstrate:
That the exercise of intellectual inquiry and the acquisition, application and integration of broad learning and skills are integral to its educational programs.
A commitment to educational achievement and improvement through ongoing assessment of student learning.
A commitment to educational improvement through ongoing attention to retention, persistence and completion rates in its degree and certificate programs.
Black River had a difficult time determining the commission’s requirements, Liebhaber said.
“What they want is for us to go through to make sure everybody’s learning the same thing, get feedback, revise the classes using the feedback and improve the next class,” she said. Faculty members “are learning to document and reflect what they’ve done,” she said.
The college has also sent faculty members to training programs headed by the commission, and they return and teach their colleagues what they learned, she said.
Accrediting agencies have turned more focus on student outcomes, Flores said, adding that it’s hard for colleges and universities to meet changing standards.
The state also is changing its focus to student success: The Legislature passed a new method to fund Arkansas’ 22 public colleges and 11 public universities. The new way is based less on enrollment and more on whether students progress to graduation and earn certificates or more.
The college last year hired an institutional researcher to help with both efforts and help administrators make more data-based decisions, Liebhaber said.
The probationary status will not exceed two years, the commission said.
Black River is unlikely to have its accreditation pulled. From 2010 to 2015, the commission — which accredits 1,245 colleges and universities — sanctioned 27 schools on a lower level when they were at risk of failing to comply with accreditation criteria and 21 schools on a higher level when they did not meet criteria, according to a 2016 study by Flores.
The study also found that regional accrediting agencies are less likely to take action on colleges and universities than national accreditors, but when the regional bodies did act, they sanctioned schools for longer periods. Regional accreditors typically have large, public colleges or well-established private colleges with accountability from either the state or a board, the study states.
“In conversations about gatekeeping and accountability, accreditors frequently maintain that the primary role of accreditation is to improve quality,” the study reads. “Longer periods of sanctioning thus could suggest that accreditors use warnings … as a way to monitor underperforming schools and track their progress.”
Regional accreditors also were less likely than their national peers to withdraw accreditation, taking that action on seven of 99 schools on probation between 2010 and 2015, the study found.
The state Department of Higher Education will continue to review the college’s programs while it is under probation. The department reviews all college and university degree programs on a rotating schedule to ensure quality academic programs that support the state’s economic development goals, said Alisha Lewis, the department’s associate director of communications.
Still, the college is taking the probationary status seriously, Liebhaber said.
“We’re trying to get on their level and do things the way they want us to,” she said. “Quality is really important to us anyway. This is a way for us to improve our quality. That’s our kind of mindset: How can we make this better for our students and our community?”