What are the minimum standards for Regional Accredidation?

What are the minimum standards that have to be met- esp. academically, in order for a college to be (Regionally) accredited? I tried to look it up on the net- but nothing I read got into too much detail.

For example what are the minimum standards for an Associates and Bachelors degree program?
I would suspect for example: 60 credits are required for the Associates and 120 for the bachelors. It seems also that English Composition 1 is Universal. It also seems that General Ed. electives for all the major disciplines are also universal.

What are the standards regarding course numbering, difficulty of courses, amount of 300 and 400 level courses needed for a Bachelors, amount of sequential coursework required for specific majors...or other quality control measures?

There is for example a Regionally Accredited, small Catholic College (Thomas Aquinas College) that offers BA's in General Studies. There are no textbooks and the curriculum is entirely based on great books. It sounds interesting and I'm sure the schools respectable but wonder how it is allowed.

There are also some schools, both traditional and distance that offer courses where the grades are based entirely on essays and term papers. (my only concern is how they would prove someone wasn't paid to do those term papers for someone).

Do religious based schools have special standards to meet?

Also how non-traditional can a non-traditional school get and still be RA? I know it's a rather open-ended question but it would be interesting to exchange some examples...

 

Here are a few resources from three of the accrediting agencies ) Western Association, Southern Association and New England Association. You can start with these to answer your questions. North Centeral, Middle States and Northwest will have similar resources on their sites.

http://www.wascweb.org/senior/newresources.htm

http://www.sacscoc.org/principles.asp

http://www.neasc.org/cihe/cihe.htm

Tony Pina
Northeastern Illinois University

 

I've read the Middle States One and the New England one so far. Both seem rather vague but this got my attention: The New England one- (which accredits Charter Oak State College) requires all schools to require 1/4 of the coursework toward a degree program at THAT institution... Charter Oak does not have a residency requirement. (Interestingly enough they only require 18 credits to be upper division for a Liberal Studies degree... I never heard of a school only requiring that few)

Don't get me wrong COSC is a great school and I have a lot of respect for it; but I wonder of it has exceptions made for it being an assessment college. Perhaps I'm mis-interpreting something...

 

Could you please tell me what the typical minimum for both a Liberal Studies degree and a normal major are?

 

The University of Tampa requires 16 credits in upper level for a Liberal Studies degree.

 

16-18? Wow, that's low! My undergrad at BYU required a minimum of 40 upper division credits. Most schools require at least 30. When my university lowered its upper division requirement last semester to under 30, I really became concerned for the quality of or bachelors degrees. We have a wierd system of course numbering, with 100, 200 being lower division 400 graduate (masters) courses. so, I suspect that some of our classes listed as 200 may really be courses that would be labelled upper division" if we had a numbering system that made sense...or perhaps not.

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University

 

I should have been more specific - that is 400 level classes. You also need 16 300.

 

OK, that would be a 32-unit total upper division requirement--that sounds reasonable. I believe that most schools require either 300 or 400 level, without specifying how many at each level (as that would make it necessary for all departments and divisions to come up with a coherent standard for course numbering, something that many are unwilling or unable to do).

Tony

 

I think that it might be useful to point out that a Liberal Studies major is generally intended as preparation for multiple-subjects teaching credentials, for elementary school teachers in other words.

The goal isn't to impart a specialist knowledge of any one field, but rather to provide a basic foundation across the entire elementary school curriculum. That means that a Liberal Studies major is going to typically include more introductory classes than typical majors (these classes are more apt to be 100-200 level), but it will require these classes in a much broader spectrum of subjects.

Here's CSUDH's Liberal Studies program:

http://www.csudh.edu/soe/lbs/

Here's their major requirements:

http://www.csudh.edu/soe/lbs/LSMajor.html

They require 56 upper division units distributed across half a dozen broad subject categories. That's actually quite a lot, though these units simultaneously meet general education requirements. A Liberal Studies major IS a general education major, after all.

So if we are looking at how many upper division units are required in a Lberal Studies program, we need to make sure that we are combining major and general education requirements.