The Middle States Commission on Higher Education has issued a “warning” that Kean University’s accreditation may be in jeopardy because the New Jersey institution is out of compliance with two of the commission’s 14 standards for measuring institutional excellence.
The standards Kean has failed to meet relate to assessment and require universities to have in place ways of assessing both student learning and the university’s effectiveness in achieving its overall mission. In a self-study report that Kean completed for Middle States in February, it acknowledged that it lacked data to make the kind of assessments Middle States requires.
A Kean spokesman said on Thursday that the institution was moving to correct the problems, although he did not answer questions about why the institution did not already perform assessments.
Professors have complained that Kean’s president, Dawood Farahi, has directed resources away from professors and students and into campus beautification and buildings. In addition, they have said that the university’s failure to meet the two accreditation standards is proof of what they call President Farahi’s longstanding habit of making decisions on his own, without input from professors or data that might come from assessment.
“The Kean Federation of Teachers has long pushed the administration to respect process, to honor faculty expertise, to be transparent and open in its dealings, and to provide faculty and staff the resources to do their jobs so as to avoid this type of outcome,” said James A. Castiglione, president of the federation, which is the full-time faculty union. “The KFT is prepared to work collaboratively with the administration so that the warning is removed for the best interests of the institution.”
Mark E. Lender, vice president for academic affairs at Kean, said the faculty union had actually been dragging its feet on pushing professors to get up to speed on assessment. He said the university, realizing it might not be in compliance with accreditation standards, opened a new office of assessment and accreditation early in 2010 and hired a full-time director.
Remains Accredited
The Middle States Commission, a division of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, says Kean will remain accredited while on warning, but by next March the university must complete a report documenting that it has achieved compliance with the two standards. After Kean completes the report, the commission says it will send a small team to the campus to check if the university is in compliance and will issue its own report. The commission will then decide whether to remove the warning or take other action at its June 2012 meeting.
Issuing a warning is among the actions the commission can take when an institution is found to be out of compliance with its standards. A warning typically precedes probation. An informational sheet on the range of actions the commission can take says: “Warning indicates that the commission believes that, although the institution is out of compliance, the institution has the capacity to make appropriate improvements within a reasonable period of time and the institution has the capacity to sustain itself in the long term.”
Middle States says Kean is out of compliance with Standard 7, which says: “The institution has developed and implemented an assessment process that evaluates its overall effectiveness in achieving its mission and goals ...” It says Kean is also out of compliance with Standard 14, which says: “Assessment of student learning demonstrates that, at graduation, or other appropriate points, the institution’s students have knowledge, skills, and competencies consistent with institutional and appropriate higher-education goals.”
Kean’s self-study document says that although the university is not in compliance with the standards because it lacks five years of data with which to make assessments, “all elements are in place to generate usable, sustainable assessment data across both academic and nonacademic programs” by the time of its next accreditation review, in 2016.
Last month Kean’s Board of Trustees approved a resolution authorizing the president to move forward with assessment efforts, according to Stephen Hudik, the university spokesman. “In fact, as part of this process, each program at the university will be evaluated every three years to ensure that it meets the objectives and mission of the university, and each program to measure student-outcome assessments will likewise be implemented,” Mr. Hudik wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle. “We are committed to student-outcomes assessment.”