by Kelly Rogge, KCKCC
Accreditation means stability to an educational organization, and Kansas City Kansas Community College is once again amid its quest to maintain that accreditation, according to college officials.
“Accreditation ensures that institutions meet all of the criteria in terms of the capacity and the quality in delivering higher education,” said Sangki Min, dean of institutional services at KCKCC. “The accreditation gives KCKCC as an institution and our students the eligibility to participate in certain governmental grants and financial aid programs. It helps our students to transfer credits to other institutions and provides the public an assurance that KCKCC has the quality and capacity as confirmed by the agency.”
Accreditation is a process where an institutional accrediting agency evaluates an entire institution in terms of its mission and how that institution meets an agency’s standards or criteria, college officials said. This review process takes place every 10 years and assesses the educational activities of the institution as well as evaluates governance and administration, financial stability, admissions and student personnel services, institutional resources, student academic achievement, institutional effectiveness and relationships with constituencies both inside and outside the school.
The process to earn and maintain accreditation is voluntary and designated by non-governmental agencies, according to college officials. The agency that accredits KCKCC is the Higher Learning Commission, which is an independent corporation founded in 1895 as one of six regional institutional accreditors in the United States.
The HLC accredits degree-granting post-secondary educational institutions in the North Central region, which includes the state of Kansas as well as 18 other states. KCKCC first received accreditation by the HLC in 1951.
“The HLC modified this (the accreditation) process starting in 2015,” Min said. “It is still a 10-year cycle, but we now get evaluated once every four years and then again in the 10th year for a full re-accreditation. We will have a visit by the HLC Accreditation Review Team that consists of faculty, staff and administrators from other colleges in November.”
Min said the modified accreditation, called Open Pathway, has two new sub processes this year – Assurance Argument and Quality Improvement. During the review in the fourth and 10th years, KCKCC now needs to submit an Assurance Argument. This is a narrative with documentation proving KCKCC meets all of the criteria and requirements set by the HLC to be fully accredited.
Between the fifth and 10th year, a Quality Improvement plan is also submitted, which the college must implement. The final piece of the accreditation process is public comments. Min said that as part of its ongoing effort to make the accreditation process responsive to a broad range of constituents, the HLC integrated the federally required third-party comment process into its regular accrediting processes since the 1997.
The commission requires institutions undergoing a comprehensive evaluation or quality checkup visits to publish basic information about the visit in appropriate publications and to invite the public to provide written comments to the commission. The commission then forwards these comments to the evaluation team members to include in their review of the institution.
“KCKCC wants to inform the public that KCKCC is an accredited institution that has the quality and capacity in delivering higher education,” Min said. “We are again in the process of getting an accreditation for the next 10 years and want to be sure that the public has the opportunity to participate through the public comments process.”
The public may submit comments by mail to – Third Party Comment on Kansas City Kansas Community College, The Higher Learning Commission, 230 South LaSalle St., Suite 7-500, Chicago, IL 60604-1411 or on the commission’s web site at
www.ncahlc.org/HLC-Institutions/third-party-comment.html.
Comments must address substantive matters related to the quality of the institution or its academic programs, according to college officials. Comments must be in writing and received by Oct. 9.
Kelly Rogge is the public information supervisor at KCKCC.