Accreditation Wonder -
"New Pathways for Unaccredited Entities and Non-Institutional Education Providers"
http://www.cooley.com/new-pathways-for-unaccredited-entities-and-non-institutional-education-providers
http://www.wascsenior.org/content/incubation-policy
Some highlights and implications relevant to World University and School from this report:
"Most recently, two major accrediting bodies have issued new guidelines and policies that are intended to facilitate review and—potentially—approval of non-traditional approaches and relationships between accredited institutions and other non-accredited and often non-institutional entities that could significantly reduce barriers to important innovations.
WSCUC incubation policy
The WASCUC Incubation policy is specifically intended to provide unaccredited entities seeking to achieve separate accreditation with a pathway—what the agency terms a "period of incubation" via a formal relationship with an already WSCUC-accredited institution. WSCUC's policy describes two possible scenarios for this type of arrangement.
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This is an important change: although the accredited institution typically provides the academic oversight for the academic component of such a venture so as to assure the quality of courses and programs delivered, there has not been any articulated path available to affirmatively develop the enterprise so that it could achieve separate accreditation. The "incubation relationship" is intended to provide a pathway for an unaccredited entity (particularly, but not exclusively, if it is a component of the institution) to develop so as to be able to demonstrate that it has a "coherent educational program or organizational configuration that can be envisioned as potentially becoming a stand-alone institution."
Of course, as would be expected, the WSCUC policy emphasizes that the accredited institution "through its continuous supervision of the unaccredited entity as an organic component [emphasis added] of its own organization, is expected to ensure [the unaccredited entity's] compliance with WSCUC requirements at each stage of the process."
WSCUC requires the accredited institution to seek approval for the recognition of a formal "incubation relationship" with an unaccredited entity through its structural change review process. The substantive change proposal would need to address issues such as planning regarding the intended incubation relationship, alignment with the institution's mission, governance and control, provision of academic services, as well as the terms of separation once it is determined that the incubated entity is ready to seek eligibility and separate accreditation. The review process is also intended to determine whether as a result of the substantive change the institution continues to meet the relevant WSCUC standards.""
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Some initial implications:
- As a Creative Commons' (CC) licensed and best CC STEM-centric online university and school, planned for all countries for eventual accreditation, and planned all languages as wiki schools, World University and School is - "an innovative or experimental educational entity or program" - and WUaS seeks to eventually be independent of its "incubation relationship," which this new WASCUC development anticipates.
- WUaS would seek an incubation relationship with a great university in California to offer online Bachelor, Ph.D., Law, and MD degrees.
- Would there be the possibility in this of WUAS developing an WSCUC incubator relationship with a college or an university in Oregon, for example, and a law school there, concurrently?
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In my dream of dreams, Stanford Law and Stanford itself would incubate WUaS through early stages of accreditation for all university degrees in English.
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