After a year-long process of preparation, Harding has officially retained its status as an accredited university as of Aug. 5, 2015. The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) assessed the university through a campus visit last spring and in a written report, and concluded that it meets the current necessary standards to maintain accreditation.
President Bruce McLarty said he was relieved, but not surprised.
“It is a marvelous relief,” McLarty said. “There was never any doubt, but it is one of those things that is never final until you get the letter.”
Along with allowing Harding to retain its accreditation, the HLC pointed out some areas of documentation that need improvement. According to Provost Larry Long, who wrote the accreditation report along with a team of other faculty members, the main focal points were strategic planning and program review. Harding faculty must complete an interim report by Jan. 30, 2017, detailing documentation improvements in both of these areas in order to maintain accreditation. In 2019, a team will review the validity of the documents at a second campus visit.
Long said planning for the future and assessing student achievement and overall program success are commonplace at Harding; the only real difference lies in the documentation style.
“It’s not that we don’t already do those things; they just want them to look a certain way,” Long said. “We need to adjust to meet those standards.”
Long said the HLC would like the university to set specific criteria for the outcomes of each degree in a detailed list rather than only focusing on the department efficiency overall.
“We have focused on programmatic achievement; they want collective student outcomes,” Long said.
Another component to the HLC’s requirements includes documentation of skill sets that are difficult to measure, such as community service. Long said that the university believes service should be voluntary by nature. Therefore, rather than requiring students to complete service projects, students may be asked to fill out questionnaires after campus events, such as Bisons for Christ, in an effort to collect data for the HLC.
McLarty and Long both said that this year’s accreditation process was unique in comparison to previous years. For example, the campus visit took place during an ice storm last February, rendering campus closed for several days while the HLC team was in Searcy. This minimized their time spent on campus observing student learning.
This accreditation cycle was also the most widely publicized in the school’s history. Due to changes on a federal level, the HLC now requires students to be much more informed about the process and encourages their input in the form of a survey. McLarty said Harding was one of the first schools to pioneer this new element.
“Students last year were more aware of the accreditation process than any other students who have come through Harding,” McLarty said.
According to McLarty, increased awareness was beneficial to the students whose federal financial aid is dependent upon the university’s accreditation, and in turn the students’ input was valuable to the university. McLarty said that it turned out to be a positive thing.
“It was very gratifying actually,” Long said. “There were far more positives than negatives.”
Long said that although the vast majority of the survey results included positive comments, one notable problem area was academic advising. According to Long, enough students pointed out problems with their advising experience that the HLC team mentioned this issue at their visit. To address the concerns raised by students, Long said the results of the surveys were sent to the Center for Student Advising.
Long said that even though an interim report is necessary, the accreditation results were strong as a whole and the required areas of improvement will only serve to make the university stronger.
“I’m a perfectionist, I didn’t want a 98, I wanted a 100,” Long said. “This becomes an opportunity or challenge to improve. I think accreditation is a really good thing. It pushes an institution toward improvement by bringing off-campus, objective eyes and forces you to demonstrate how you can meet criteria.”
