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ACCREDITATION

NOTE: The Accreditation function at UC is now under the Educational Relations Department. Updated information is at:

http://www.ucop.edu/edrelations/accreditation/

All UC campuses are accredited by California's regional accrediting agency, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). The 2002 Systemwide Policy and Data Portfolio is now availabe in PDF format.

Accreditation is the system used by American higher education to assure quality.  A distinctive American innovation, it began some 100 year ago, and relies on voluntary peer review in the belief that  those within the academy are best able to evaluate the quality of higher education institutions. The process is facilitated by six regional accrediting associations which are independent, non-profit organizations whose members are the educational institutions within the region.  These agencies are responsible for assessing the overall academic and educational performance of the college or university.  Each regional accrediting agency establishes its own processes and review procedures, and the specific standards used to assess a university's performance are determined by each region.  The federal government looks to the accrediting process to provide assurance not only of quality but also of the financial viability of the educational institutions whose students are to receive federal financial aid.  Consequently, accrediting agencies must comply with specific federal policies in order to be recognized by the Department of Education, and colleges and universities must be accredited by a recognized agency in order for their students to be eligible to receive federal financial aid.  The two fundamental objectives of accreditation can be seen, then, as the assurance of public accountability by the institution, and the encouragement of self-improvement on the campus, viewed in the context of the campus's own mission.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is the accrediting association for the western region of the United States which includes California,  Hawaii, the territories of Guam, American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the Pacific Basin, and East Asia, and areas of the Pacific and East Asia where American/International schools or colleges may apply to it for service.  The Association has three Commissions that oversee accreditation for (1) schools below the college level, (2) community and junior colleges, and (3) senior (four-year) colleges and universities.  The last of these, the Senior Commission of WASC, is the body responsible for accrediting the University of California campuses.  Reviews generally take place on a ten-year cycle.

There have been major changes in the accreditation process in the western region of the U.S. over the past decade and the University of California has been an active participant in shaping these changes.  The end result of this period of intense debate and experimentation is a revised Handbook of Accreditation, 2001 [pdf],  that focuses on educational effectiveness, attunes the accreditation review to each campus's own strategic planning process, and results in lower cost for the campus.  Six UC campuses were reviewed and reaffirmed during this experimental period.  UC campuses and their most recent and next scheduled accreditation reviews are listed below.  

The Academic Initiatives department provides systemwide liaison with WASC.  Because UC campuses are part of a system, some of the information required for accreditation reviews is the same for all ten campuses, e.g. information about governance, research and personnel policies, etc., and this information can be made available by the UC System office on behalf of all campuses. Therefore a Systemwide Policy and Data Portfolio has been prepared by the Academic Initiatives department.  It includes information about systemwide policies and research initiatives, and systemwide data about faculty, students, and staff of the institution as a whole.