Accreditation
- Accredited institutions of postsecondary education are committed to preserving, improving, and strengthening voluntary, non-governmental accreditation, recognizing that the undesirable alternatives are academic disorder or ever-increasing governmental control.
- To ensure that order and value prevail in the accreditation process, these institutions (through their membership associations) support the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) as their "chosen instrument" to recognize, monitor, and work with accrediting bodies.
- This set of relationships can work well only if all parties involved carry out their implicit and explicit responsibilities:
For CHEA, this means:
- Establishing standards for accrediting bodies and recognizing only those that meet the standards.
- Assuring that the accrediting activities of such bodies focus on evaluating, improving, and attesting to educational quality.
- Working to achieve cooperation and coordination among accrediting bodies and to discourage unnecessary proliferation and duplication of accrediting activities.
- Acting quickly and effectively to rectify improper accrediting practices.
- Providing leadership toward the continuing improvement of accreditation.
For accrediting organizations, this means:
- Recognizing that, ultimately, individual accrediting bodies will survive only if the total process of nongovernmental accreditation continues to have public, and particularly institutional, support.
- Accepting and supporting CHEA as their national means for identifying and achieving common objectives.
- Working with and through CHEA to improve and better coordinate accrediting activities.
For accredited institutions, this means:
- Dealing only with CHEA-recognized accrediting bodies.
- Following CHEA guidelines with regard to statements concerning accreditation appearing in catalogs and other published materials.
- Identifying one person, preferably responsible to the president of the institution, to be responsible for coordinating all institutional relations with each accrediting body or bodies.
- Accepting a responsibility to provide volunteer leadership, wherever appropriate, within recognized accrediting organizations.
Approved by the Board of Trustees
Macomb Community College
March 20, 1979
Revised May 20, 1997
(Reviewed by Office of General Counsel, December 2011)
Updated pursuant to Board authorization, January 2023