Accreditation in Higher Education
The accreditation process must be used to strengthen the integrity of American higher education. Therefore:
- NEA supports regional, state, national, and discipline accrediting bodies that recognize and promote substantial participation of faculty in the entire accrediting process.
- NEA believes that, to protect institutional diversity and autonomy, accrediting agencies should not become a means for imposing standardized curricula, assessment models, or pedagogical methods on higher education institutions.
- NEA believes that accreditation should be a process whereby programs, facilities, faculty, and administrators are reviewed to enhance and improve learning opportunities for students.
Furthermore, NEA proposes that the accrediting process give special attention to the following issues:
- mission of the institution
- student access with financial aid tied to tuition increases
- remedial and retention programs
- student living conditions
- class size
- faculty-student ratio
- counseling and student support programs
- overreliance on non-tenure track or part-time faculty
- status of affirmative action in hiring of faculty and staff
- racial dynamics on campus
- faculty compensation and benefits, including pay equity
- faculty development programs
- adequate resources for research
- working conditions for faculty and staff
- library staff and holdings
- ratio of administrators to faculty, including acting administrators
- curriculum diversity
- access to state of the art electronic media
- maintenance of facilities
- state of the art equipment and technologies for all programs
- quality control of distance education delivery
- health and safety
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