HLC - Criteria for Accreditation

Criterion 2: Preparing for the Future (Key Questions)

The organization's allocation of resources and its processes for evaluation and planning demonstrate its capacity to fulfill its mission, improve the quality of its education, and respond to future challenges and opportunities.

Core Components

Core Component 2a: The organization realistically prepares for a future shaped by multiple societal and economic trends.

As it defines, identifies, and interprets evidence related to this core component, the university may wish to consider evidence such as the following:

• The organization's planning documents reflect a sound understanding of the organization's current capacity.
• The organization's planning documents demonstrate that attention is being paid to emerging factors such as technology, demographic shifts, and globalization.
• The organization's planning documents show careful attention to the organization's function in a multicultural society.
• The organization's planning processes include effective environmental scanning.
• The organizational environment is supportive of innovation and change.
• The organization incorporates in its planning those aspects of its history and heritage that it wishes to preserve and continue.
• The organization clearly identifies authority for decision making about organizational goals.

Core Component 2b: The organization's resource base supports its educational programs and its plans for maintaining and strengthening their quality in the future.

As it defines, identifies, and interprets evidence related to this core component, the university may wish to consider evidence such as the following:

• The organization's resources are adequate for achievement of the educational quality it claims to provide.
• Plans for resource development and allocation document an organizational commitment to supporting and strengthening the quality of the education it provides.
• The organization uses its human resources effectively.
• The organization intentionally develops its human resources to meet future changes.
• The organization's history of financial resource development and investment documents a forward-looking concern for ensuring educational quality (e.g., investments in faculty development, technology, learning support services, new or renovated facilities).
• The organization's planning processes are flexible enough to respond to unanticipated needs for program reallocation, downsizing, or growth.
• The organization has a history of achieving its planning goals.

Core Component 2c: The organization's ongoing evaluation and assessment processes provide reliable evidence of institutional effectiveness that clearly informs strategies for continuous improvement.

As it defines, identifies, and interprets evidence related to this core component, the university may wish to consider evidence such as the following:

• The organization demonstrates that its evaluation processes provide evidence that its performance meets its stated expectations for institutional effectiveness.
• The organization maintains effective systems for collecting, analyzing, and using organizational information.
• Appropriate data and feedback loops are available and used throughout the organization to support continuous improvement.
• Periodic reviews of academic and administrative subunits contribute to improvement of the organization.
• The organization provides adequate support for its evaluation and assessment processes.

Core Component 2d: All levels of planning align with the organization's mission, thereby enhancing its capacity to fulfill that mission.

As it defines, identifies, and interprets evidence related to this core component, the university may wish to consider evidence such as the following:

• Coordinated planning processes center on the mission documents that define vision, values, goals, and strategic priorities for the organization.
• Planning processes link with budgeting processes.
• Implementation of the organization's planning is evident in its operations.
• Long-range strategic planning processes allow for reprioritization of goals when necessary because of changing environments.
• Planning documents give evidence of the organization's awareness of the relationships among educational quality, student learning, and the diverse, complex, global, and technological world in which the organization and its students exist.
• Planning processes involve internal constituents and, where appropriate, external constituents.

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