Five Dimensions of Quality

A Common Sense Guide to Accreditation and Accountability

Linda Suskie

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118761571
• eBook ISBN: 9781118761502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Evaluation & Assessment in Education

Meet calls for increased quality and understand accreditation expectations

Author Linda Suskie is internationally recognized for her work in higher education assessment, and she is a former vice president of a major regional accreditor. In Five Dimensions of Quality: A Common Sense Guide to Accreditation and Accountability in Higher Education she provides a simple, straightforward model for understanding and meeting the calls for increased quality in higher education ever-present in today's culture. Whether your institution is seeking accreditation or not, the five dimensions she outlines will help you to identify ways to improve institutional quality and demonstrate that quality to constituents.

For those wading through the accreditation process, which has become more difficult in recent years due to increasing regulation and pressure for greater accountability, Suskie offers expert guidance on understanding the underlying principles of the expectations of accrediting bodies. Using the model presented here, which is much easier to understand than the sometimes complex resources provided by individual accrediting bodies, American colleges and universities can understand what they need to do to earn and maintain their regional accreditation as well as improve overall institutional quality for their students. You'll be able to:

• Identify ways to improve institutional quality
• Demonstrate the quality of your institution to internal and external constituents
• Avoid wasting time and energy on misguided institutional processes to comply with accreditation requirements

By focusing on why colleges and universities should take particular actions rather than only on what those actions should be, Five Dimensions of Quality gives them the knowledge and strategies to prepare for a successful review. It is an ideal resource for leaders, accreditation committee members, and everyone on campus.

Dimension IV:
A Culture of Evidence

CHAPTER 13
GAUGING SUCCESS

A quality college continually gauges its progress toward its goals so it can ensure that it will achieve those goals—arrive at its destinations—safely and on time or so it can make adjustments if warranted. It also continually gauges its success in fulfilling its other responsibilities that are discussed in Chapter 5. This chapter reviews some of many potential gauges of a college’s success. (See Chapter 6 for information on gauging success in ensuring your college’s health and well-being and for deploying resources effectively and efficiently.) This chapter provides examples, not recommendations; your measures must fit your college’s purpose, values, goals, and stakeholder needs, and the examples here may not.

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Jargon Alert!

Performance Indicators, Metrics, Performance Measures, Key Performance Indicators, and Dashboard Indicators

Performance indicators, metrics, and performance measures are all terms for measures of quality and effectiveness. Those measures that are particularly critical to tracking quality and effectiveness are called key performance indicators or dashboard indicators. Use whatever term fits best with your college culture. In this book, I generally use the term measure.

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Jargon Alert!

Institutional Assessment

Institutional assessment refers to gauging a college’s effectiveness or institutional effectiveness. In Chapter 5 I define effectiveness more broadly than some. I include not only achieving purpose and goals but also meeting stakeholder needs, serving the public good, ensuring ongoing health and well-being, and deploying resources effectively, prudently, and efficiently.

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Gauging Student Success

Many stakeholders are particularly interested in evidence that your college uses student tuition and fees effectively, prudently, and efficiently to help students achieve their goals. The most important gauges of student success concern student learning, which is discussed later in this chapter. But many stakeholders also want to see information such as the following:

• Proportion of students who achieve their educational goals such as earning a degree, earning a certificate, progress toward more advanced study elsewhere, or simply boosting skills (Examples of measures include student retention and graduation rates, such as the proportion of degree-seeking students still enrolled one year after entering and the proportion of students who, three years after entering a community college, have earned an associate’s degree or are still enrolled in college, either at your college or elsewhere.)
• Proportion of students who achieve their educational goals in a timely fashion (Students who take an extra year to achieve their educational goals may pay more in tuition and fees, plus lose a year of the higher earnings they anticipate.)
• Proportion of students who, after achieving their educational goal, are in the jobs for which they prepared
• Ratio of tuition and fees paid by students against what they earn after achieving their educational goals
• Debt-to-income ratio, comparing graduates’ student loan debt against their earnings

Student experiences and outcomes vary considerably within any college, so students may want answers to these questions broken down for their program of study or college experience (say, for working adults or online students).

Gauging Responsiveness to the Changing College Student

Government policymakers want to know how effectively your college meets the needs of today’s students, while prospective students and their families want to know about specific “fit”: how effectively your college meets the needs of students like them, specifically information such as the following:

• Profile of the students your college aims to serve: your “target clientele,” as discussed in Chapter 9
• Profile of the students your college actually enrolls
• How your college helps students succeed, including what your college does to provide students with optimal learning experiences and the extent to which your college engages in research-based teaching-learning practices
• Average debt load of students who graduate from your college or leave before graduating

Gauging Economic Development Contributions

Government policymakers and employers want to know how effectively your college contributes to the regional or national economy, specifically information such as the following:

• Proportions of your college’s students who graduate with the types and levels of knowledge, skills, competencies, and dispositions that employers want and need (Employers may want evidence broken down by occupation.)
• Number of graduates prepared for high-demand fields
• Proportion of your graduates who stay and work in your region after graduating
• Economic impact of your college—including the economic contributions of its students, employees, and their families—on your region
• Impact of research conducted at your college on the economies of your region and the country

Gauging Contributions to the Public Good

Potential gauges of contributions to the public good depend on your college’s goals, but two examples include:

• Number of internships at regional non-profit community agencies
• Attendance by community residents at cultural events

Gauging Achievement of College Purpose and Goals

College goals vary widely; only very rarely do I see any two colleges share even similar goals. Because of this, there is no neat list of measures for college goals or other aspects of institutional effectiveness. (Measures of student learning outcomes, discussed in the next section, do generally fall into a few common categories.) The preceding sections of this chapter offer some examples of potential dashboard indicators for college goals; Table 13.1 offers some additional examples.

TABLE 13.1. Examples of Dashboard Indicators for Some Hypothetical College Goals

Goal	Potential Dashboard Indicators
Provide a student-centered environment.	Responses to relevant questions on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) or Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)
Students engage in active learning.	Proportion of faculty participating in professional development opportunities to incorporate active learning in their classes
	Proportion of students participating in field experiences such as internships, practicums, and service learning
Increase the diversity of the college community.	Student, faculty, and staff profiles
Strengthen the faculty profile.	Proportion of faculty holding degrees in fields appropriate to what they are teaching
	Proportion of faculty using learning-centered teaching strategies
	Proportion of class...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of Tables and Exhibits
• List of Jargon Alerts
• List of Acronyms
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction: Today’s Quality Context
• Dimension I: A Culture of Relevance
• Dimension II: A Culture of Community
• Dimension III: A Culture of Focus and Aspiration
• Dimension IV: A Culture of Evidence
• Dimension V: A Culture of Betterment
• Conclusion: Integrating and Advancing the Five Dimensions of Quality
• References
• Index
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• End User License Agreement