About Accreditation: Overview

• Introduction
• About the NCA
• NCA criteria
• Download "To Chronicle & Celebrate"

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"In the United States, accreditation is voluntarily sought by institutions and is conferred by non-governmental bodies—membership organizations that accredit and thereby grant membership to educational institutions." These words, from the North Central Association's Website, present the essence of accreditation in the United States. In contrast to the practice in some other countries where the government provides accreditation, in the U.S. it is provided through a network of peer professional groups.

In the United States, six peer professional groups are distributed geographically. In the Chicago area, the group is the North Central Association (NCA). Loyola has been an accredited member of NCA since 1995; it will be reviewed again in Spring 2005.

About the NCA
NCA does not credit individual programs. Rather, it accredits the institution as a whole, verifying that it has the wherewithal to offer whatever programs it proposes. So, this accreditation does not look only at our academic programming, but also at the other aspects of university life—financial, administrative and interpersonal. And, since universities differ so much among themselves, NCA does not impose a single vision of what should occur. Rather, it measures the individual university against general criteria that apply to higher education as a whole.

NCA criteria
In Loyola's case, the specific criteria being used will present their own issues. NCA has just completed a multi-year process of revising its criteria. (To review NCA criteria, click here.) The new criteria have been announced, but they have never yet been used. So, it is impossible to know exactly how this will work.

But one thing is clear: NCA, in concert with the other regional agencies, has decisively changed the focus of the criteria. In the past, accreditation focused on resources: Do you have what you need to do your job? Money? Buildings? Books? Faculty? The new criteria are much more interested in processes: Is your operation characterized by competence, creativity, responsiveness, etc.? As NCA literature states: "Are you future-oriented, learning-focused, connected and distinctive?"

The question used to be: Are you good? Now the question is: Are you getting better? Answering this question will be our goal in the next two years.

"To Chronicle & Celebrate"
Download a brochure, entitled "To Chronicle & Celebrate: Loyola University Chicago's North Central Association Reaccreditation Process," a compilation of information (also featured on this Website) covering the self-study plan, report outline, schedule and participants; leadership input plan; NCA criteria of evaluation; and accreditation site visit.