Educational Advisors Inc. - Accreditation and Compliance Guidance

September 19, 2011 ~ Council on Occupational Education

In accordance with a new interpretation of student achievement by the U.S. Department of Education, the Council has been working throughout this year to revise its minimum requirements for completion, placement, and licensure pass rate percentages. The new interpretation by the Department requires that the Council focus on individual program performance rather than performance of institutions as a whole.

The Council has researched several new methods of calculating minimum requirements, reviewed the methods used by other similar agencies, and consulted with the staff of the U.S. Department of Education. The Council Committee on Standards reviewed several proposals at its recent meeting in August, 2011, and endorsed a policy that would apply the following minimum percentages to each program:

COMPLETION RATE: 60%
PLACEMENT RATE: 70%
LICENSURE EXAM PASS RATE: 70%

The Commission met early in September, 2011, and approved this policy for use with the 2011 Annual Report software.

Another significant departure from the Council’s previous method is that there will no longer be a separation of public and non-public institutions when applying compliance minimums. Public and non-public institutions will be held to the same minimums for all programs. However, Job Corps Centers will continue to be held to separate minimum requirements calculated from Job Corps Center performance data.

Following this change to focus on programs rather than institutions are additional changes made to the timeline for compliance when programs are triggered for not meeting required minimum percentages. In accordance with Department of Education regulations, the length of the longest program offered by an institution will determine the timeline for compliance. Institutions that offer programs of less than one year in length will have one year to bring triggered programs into compliance with minimum percentages; institutions whose longest program is one year, but less than two years, will have 18 months for compliance; and institutions whose longest program is two years in length will have two years for compliance.

Programs that fail to meet one or more of the minimum percentages will be placed on program probation status. Program probation is defined as follows:

Program Probation – This status is imposed when a program reports completion, placement, and/or licensure exam pass rates below the established benchmark(s). Unlike institutional probation, program probation does not prohibit an institution from applying for approval of substantive changes. If the institution seeks to make changes to the program(s) on probationary status, Commission approval must be acquired through submission of the appropriate program application(s). Program probation violations must be corrected within the timeframe specified in the Commission’s letter to the institution or the program will lose candidate status or accreditation.

While program probation is not as restrictive as institutional probation (that is, program probation does not prohibit substantive change approvals institution-wide), it does have a definite timeline attached to it which requires compliance within that time frame (discussed above) or the program risks the loss of accreditation or pre-accreditation status. 

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