Middle States Re-Accreditation: An Overview
Since September 2022, Yeshiva University has been participating in a routine evaluation to renew its accreditation status with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. At this time, the university has completed the two-year long research and evaluation process. Now it awaits a decision from the Middle States Commission as to what policies and practices it must improve or implement in order to maintain its accreditation. The university administration has barely communicated to the university community about this process, so this article will attempt to provide some background on what accreditation is and the details of Yeshiva University’s progress through the process.
The purpose of accreditation is to demonstrate that an educational institution is following a set of standards, which ensures that all schools sharing the accreditation will offer equivalent education. Institutions that offer higher education, such as Yeshiva University, benefit monetarily from maintaining accreditation since the Federal Government only recognizes accredited schools of higher education for its financial assistance programs including student loans. If Yeshiva University wants to receive tuition payments through federal student loans or Pell Grants (grants for low-income students), it must maintain its accreditation.
There are various types of accreditation that focus on different elements of an educational institution’s operation. Many professional organizations provide accreditation to educational programs that train students in their respective fields. For example, the American Bar Association accredits law schools throughout the United States. The American Bar Association requires its accredited schools to fulfill several broad requirements including providing a baseline curriculum, retaining properly trained faculty, and maintaining sufficient library and research resources. YU’s own Cardozo School of Law is accredited by the American Bar Association. The American Bar Association’s accreditation service ensures that all of its accredited law schools offer equivalent education and the education can be updated to meet changing professional standards.
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education offers accreditation for entire educational institutions unlike professional organizations which will only accredit one program within an educational institution. Consequently, their accreditation is less focused on curriculum and more focused on the school’s governance practices. Very broadly, the Middle States Commission looks at a school’s ability to plan ahead, fulfill its goals, and collect data on all of its operations to inform future plans.
The Middle States Commission’s accreditation evaluation process seeks to determine how well the university follows the Commission’s standards of accreditation. The university must undergo a lengthy research process to study its practices and policies in light of the standards of accreditation.
First, the university conducts a self-study where administrators, faculty and staff research the university’s practices and make a case for how the university fulfills the Middle States Commission’s standards of accreditation. Next, after the self-study is completed, a team of peer administrators and faculty from other universities make a four-day visit to the university. During this visit, the peer evaluation team meets with administrators and faculty and can request documents that were not included in the self-study. Using the information collected at this visit, the peer evaluation team writes a report of their own, evaluating how well the university fulfills the accreditation requirements. Both the self-study and the peer evaluation report are sent to the Middle States Commission’s board who reviews the reports and then issues their ruling on the university’s accreditation status.
At the very beginning of the accreditation process, representatives of Yeshiva University met with Middle States Commission staff to create a plan for the self-study process and the peer evaluation team visit. This plan was published to the Yeshiva University website on March 23, 2023. The self-study plan contained an outline of the structure of the self-study, lists of people appointed to the working groups that would research and draft each chapter, and a schedule with approximate dates for the whole evaluation process.
The plan divided the self-study into seven chapters with each chapter defending the university’s compliance with one of the seven standards for Middle States accreditation. The working groups for each chapter were comprised of staff, faculty and administrators. In previous self-studies YU included students in these working groups.
The schedule contained within the self-study plan laid out a timeline for the drafting and editing of the self-study. According to the schedule, the research and initial drafting of the self-study was to be conducted during the spring 2023 semester. The draft would be reviewed and revised over the summer break. A completed draft would be ready by November 2023 for the peer evaluation team chair to review during his preliminary visit that month. In the following two months, the self-study team would incorporate the peer evaluation team chair’s critiques and submit the completed self-study to the Middle States Commission in February or March 2024.
Although this was the plan, the reality of how it unfolded is unclear. The webpage for the self-study was published seven months after the evaluation process was initiated. Furthermore, the news and announcements webpage, which seems to have been where updates to the process would have been published, contained only a paragraph of lorem ipsum filler text for several months.
Despite this lack of communication, there is some written evidence to track the progress of the self-study.
The September 2023 Faculty Council minutes recorded an update from Provost Botman on the progress of the self-study: “Middle-states re[-]accreditation is going well. Finishing up self-study. Middle states chose Father [Joseph] McShane from Fordham as lead reviewer. He will come in November for a preliminary visit and then again in April.”
Father Joseph McShane made his preliminary visit to review the self-study and offer his recommendations on Dec. 7, 2023, a few weeks behind schedule since this visit was planned for November.
The Middle States Commission requires the self-study to be submitted a minimum of six weeks before the peer evaluation visit. This means that if YU intended to have the peer evaluation team visit in April, as Provost Botman reported, the self-study needed to have been completed by late February in order to accommodate the required six-week period.
The self-study was published to the university community on April 16, 2024 with an email that was sent to the entire university community. This email included details about an open comment period that would end on May 8 in addition to the dates of the peer evaluation visit, June 23–26. The peer evaluation dates changing from April to late June, meant that the peer evaluators would not be visiting YU while it was in full session.
The Middle States Commission recommends that an institution conducting a self-study should regularly solicit feedback from all members of the university community. The feedback is intended to assist the self-study authors in ensuring accuracy and quality in their analysis. Although YU’s self-study plan outlined multiple feedback periods throughout the self-study revision process, the self-study steering committee chose to have one lengthy comment period after the self-study was completed. This comment period contained a few methods of submitting comments to the self-study steering committee. Commenters could post a comment on the Microsoft Sharepoint page on which the self-study was published, they could email the steering committee or attend one of three Zoom conference comment sessions.
The co-chairs of the self-study steering committee Deputy Provost Timothy Stevens and Dean Leslie Halpern of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology fielded questions and comments during these Zoom conference comment sessions. During the final session, on May 8, one of the participants asked what caused the delay in publishing the self-study. Dean Halpern responded, explaining that the events of Oct. 7 in Israel impacted the self-study authors’ ability to complete it on schedule.
“[I]n October with the atrocities that happened in Israel and the university’s very strong pivot to attending to what was happening in Israel it became a very difficult time for everybody to get work done,” said Dean Halpern.
The peer evaluation team visited Yeshiva University from June 23 to June 26. Father Joseph McShane was replaced by James F. Trainer of Villanova University as the peer evaluation team chair. The peer evaluation team produced their own report on YU’s compliance with Middle States’ accreditation standards, which has not been released to the public. On the last day of the peer evaluation team’s visit, Trainer delivered an oral summary of the team’s findings which was closed to the press in accordance with the Middle States Commission’s policy.
When asked for a comment about the self-study, Provost Botman said: “The Team’s findings will be considered by the Middle States Commission at its Nov. 20, 2024, meeting, at which time the Commission will vote on the renewal of YU’s accreditation. We look forward to continuing to work with Middle States in support of the University’s students, faculty, and staff.”
In 2012, the most recent re-accreditation process, Middle States found that YU needed to improve a few policies in order to maintain its accreditation status. At the time, YU lacked a standard policy for faculty appointment, promotion, tenure and reporting grievances. Further, there was no official mechanism for faculty to provide input on designing and updating curriculums. In addition, YU had no system for collecting data on the effectiveness of its courses and improving the courses according to the data. YU was able to resolve all the faculty policy issues within a year by producing the 2013 Faculty Handbook which contained a standard policy for hiring and promoting faculty, and the 2013 Yeshiva College Governance By-Laws which contained rules for faculty input on curriculums. In order to address the issues with collecting data on courses, YU created the Learning Assessment office to begin assessing the effectiveness of courses.
The Middle States Commission is not a punitive organization. If a university wants to maintain its accreditation, the commission will work with them to make sure it gets maintained. Generally, Middle States will only revoke accreditation when a school no longer wants it. The Middle States Commission’s ruling in November will likely contain a few provisions that the University must fulfill in order to maintain its accreditation.
Photo Caption: Yeshiva University
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University
