From the Chronicle: Texas Tech was put on probation for failing to show that its curriculum met college-level competencies, Ms. Wheelan said. The federal government is putting new emphasis on student-learning outcomes, she said, and colleges must show what students are getting out of their classes. "Somewhere along the line, they failed to demonstrate that," she said. Margaret S. Lutherer, executive director of communications at Texas Tech, said the university had put in place just last year a program to make those assessments. Because the program is so new, the university did not have the results ready for the association in time, she said. "We had to have documented evidence," Ms. Lutherer said. "Since we just implemented this last year, we don't have enough evidence." Student learning outcomes are a big deal now. The community college I work for is working on developing and assessing student outcomes as a result of our last visit from HLC.
TSU (Texas Southern University) is also on probation due to financial Instability. Aparently the President of TSU tried to embezle money from the school. Though the court case ended in a hung jury.
Delays Prompted by Difference Over Assessment Strategy Led to Probation for Texas Tech A regional accreditor that placed Texas Tech University on probation said the university failed to turn in data on time to show that the curriculum meets college-level competencies. University officials said they did not have enough time to compile the information because the accreditor found fault with the assessment strategy the university submitted in September 2006. It didn't let the university know that it needed different data until January, after the semester had already begun, Tech officials said. Tech officials insisted that its programs are sound, but they acknowledged that the probationary status was a black eye for the university, which has more than 28,000 students. "It's very worrisome," Margaret S. Lutherer, a university spokeswoman, said on Friday. "Every official at the university understands and believes that this probation has nothing to do with the quality of our academic programs and our good standing for accreditation. But the perception of the word 'probation,' and the stigma, is troubling." After accrediting Texas Tech in 2005, the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requested four reports, three of which the university successfully completed. The university did not have the data ready for the fourth report by the time the accrediting body met this month, university officials said. If the university were to lose accreditation, its students would be ineligible for federal financial aid. Plan to Get Off Probation University officials said the data would be ready by the end of the spring semester, would be analyzed over the summer, and would be reported to the accreditor by September. They said they expected the report would satisfy the accreditor and that the university's probation would be lifted at the association's annual meeting next December. The accrediting commission's president, Belle S. Wheelan, said the commission felt it had no choice but to put Texas Tech on probation after it failed for two years to demonstrate necessary levels of student achievement. The commission's rules require colleges to identify the abilities they expect students to have after taking lower-level "general education" courses, Ms. Wheelan told The Chronicle. The colleges are then expected "to make adjustments based on the results that they find so that they can go back and change the curriculum" if necessary or take other steps to improve student results, she said. "And they had not completed a full cycle of that yet," Ms. Wheelan said of Texas Tech, a public university in Lubbock, in northwestern Texas. "They had the outcomes, but they didn't know whether they were the right ones," she said. Ms. Lutherer, the university spokeswoman, said that in January, the commission told Texas Tech that the plan it had submitted relied too much on the assessment of specific courses, rather than a more general assessment of overall learning. Tech officials reworked their assessment strategy and sent a survey to graduates asking for their input on what they had learned. Few students responded to that survey. Because Texas Tech had already spent two years in a monitoring period, the commission was required to either grant Texas Tech accreditation, revoke the accreditation, or place the university in the one-year probationary period, Ms. Wheelan said. At its meeting last week, the Southern Association also placed Texas Southern University and the University of the Americas-Puebla on probation, citing financial-management issues (The Chronicle, December 12). The accrediting agency's actions come at the end of a year in which the U.S. Education Department has been pressing colleges and their accreditors to show more evidence of student-performance assessments. Pressure on Accreditors The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, or Naciqi, the federal panel that conducts the department's reviews of college accreditors, has threatened to recommend revoking federal recognition of accrediting agencies that pay insufficient attention to the issue. Colleges and their accreditors must comply because students can receive federally guaranteed loans only if they attend a college that has been approved by an accrediting agency recognized by the department. The accrediting agency's actions in the case of Texas Tech, however, were not related to pressure from the Education Department for colleges and their accreditors to improve measures of student assessment, Ms. Wheelan said. Texas Tech was punished under a standard that the Southern Association has had in place since 2002. The Southern Association, meanwhile, is trying to resolve its own recognition issue. Naciqi granted the agency a full five-year renewal of accrediting authority last year but asked it to submit a follow-up report on a matter concerning the composition of its appeals committee. Naciqi had planned to review the Southern Association's compliance at its semiannual meeting, which is due to begin Tuesday, but postponed action until its next meeting in the spring. Members of the Southern Association approved the change requested by Naciqi at their meeting last week in New Orleans, but not in enough time for the accreditor to present the results at this week's Naciqi meeting in Washington, Ms. Wheelan said.
Wow, weird story. Texas Tech is a great school. I took DL and on-campus classes there way back when the earth was cooling and dinosaurs roamed the Llano Estacado... Dave
