Resource Guides

Academic Program Review Resource Guide (Sept. 2009)

This good-practice guide (download) is designed to assist colleges and universities with meeting the new program review expectations within WASC’s revised accreditation standards. While it is useful for meeting the revised standards, the guide is framed in terms of ‘good practices’ for academic program review processes rather than accreditation compliance.

We encourage you to join the discussion forum on this topic, add your comments and share samples of your own outcomes-based program review guidelines.

We all benefit from having a variety of models from which to customize the program review processes.

Transparency & Accountability Resource Guide (Oct. 2009)

Within the past few years, institutions of higher education have come under increasing criticism for an alleged lack of transparency and accountability. This criticism was reflected in the 2006 report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education in the United States, commonly known as the Spellings Commission Report, and surfaced repeatedly in the Congressional debates leading to the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

Although institutions produce a wealth of public data about inputs (e.g., admission rates and test scores of entering students), historically, they have provided considerably less data about outputs (e.g., student achievement).

This guide is intended to assist institutions in complying with CFR 1.2. It does not establish mandatory requirements beyond the expectation that data they do share should be readily accessible and in an easily understandable form.

Read the Report and Join our online discussion.

Graduation and Retention Resource Guide (July 2010)

As a part of a call for greater institutional accountability, colleges and universities have been called upon to do more to insure that students are successful in the pursuit of their degrees.  This guide (download) has been developed to assist institutions in collecting, analyzing, understanding and acting on data about student success, as this important aspect of institutional effectiveness is defined and researched at each institution. These materials are intended to provide suggestions to institutions looking to define their own standards for student success and using available data and research methodologies that are best suited for the resources found at their campuses. This report is intended only to provide guidance, and is not mandatory or official WASC policy. The methods suggested in it are not exclusive of other methods of research, analysis and student support utilized by institutions in the region.