EVOLVE Strategic Plan

2021–2025

HLC’s strategic plan, EVOLVE, identifies the guiding framework for the initiatives the organization will pursue through 2025.

Advocacy Agenda

The 2022 HLC Advocacy Agenda provides a voice for HLC’s strategic directions on higher education issues at the federal and state levels. HLC is committed to representing its member institutions of higher education with a commitment to thought leadership. This commitment extends to providing input on all relevant legislative-, executive-, and judicial-branch issues as they pertain to HLC, accreditation and higher education writ large.

HLC Membership by the Numbers

HLC will be publishing aggregated data about its member institutions three times a year to demonstrate trends in higher education and within the HLC community.

2021 Institutional Update Data (September 2021)

Key Findings of the Application of the Criteria for Accreditation (January 2022)

Student Success Measures

2022

This HLC research initiative builds on the 2015-16 C-RAC project to analyze graduation rates and strives to better understand the practices and circumstances at member institutions that have improved their graduation rates, along with the reasons that have led to the status quo or in some instances declining rates. HLC’s aim is to help institutions improve student retention and completion. This initiative seeks to identify successful practices as well as continuing (and new) challenges.

Differential Accreditation

2021–Present

In 2021, HLC launched a project to pilot differential accreditation by institutional sector. In developing this project, HLC recognizes the growing interest among some colleges and universities for quality indicators such as accreditation standards to be attentive to the interests, needs, aspirations and constraints of the sector in which an institution operates. An advisory group of institutional presidents who represent a diverse range of settings and institution types is working with HLC to develop the pilot project.

Quality Awareness Initiatives

2019–2022

HLC's Quality Awareness Initiatives explore new quality assurance approaches that better account for the diversity of educational intentions of today’s students. The program seeks to foster transparency in accreditation and demonstrate commitment to serving today’s changing student populations as well as expand availability of higher education credentials that better align with the needs and educational intents of those learners.

Stakeholders' Roundtable

To gain insight into employer interest and attitudes related to higher education credentials, HLC convened a roundtable of corporate leaders. These leaders wrote thought papers to offer recommendations on the changing landscape of accreditation and quality assurance as well as expectations of institutional transparency related to credentials and learner competencies.

Evolving: Accreditation and the Credential Landscape (April 2022)

Teach-Out Toolkit

As one of its Quality Awareness Initiatives, HLC collaborated with a group of institutional representatives and representatives from higher education state agencies who have been involved in teach-out situations to develop tools to help institutions prepare for and implement successful teach outs. With generous funding from Lumina Foundation, HLC convened this group to develop a Teach-Out Toolkit.

Teach-Out Toolkit (November 2020)

Innovation Zone

2018–2019

HLC’s Innovation Zone, comprised of 10 representatives from institutions in HLC’s region, identified opportunities for HLC and its members to be more supportive of innovation. The group developed proposals related to improving HLC’s substantive change process and creating a new process for HLC to work with institutions to test innovation in higher education.

A Space to Innovate (November 2018)

Continuous Improvement of the Substantive Change Process (November 2018)

Partners for Transformation

2017–2019

HLC’s Partners for Transformation was a blue-ribbon panel tasked with offering innovative ideas on accreditation of colleges and universities. This group of higher education thought leaders conceptualized 21st-century accrediting practices that assure quality in higher education and ultimately better benefit students in today’s world.

The group’s work culminated in a series of thought papers on student-focused accrediting agencies, an accreditation infrastructure focused on shared services, and the roles of the Triad of federal and state bodies and accrediting agencies.

Innovation: Beyond the Horizon and the Future of Higher Education (April 2019)

Student Success Data Projects

2018–2019

HLC launched two joint initiatives on student success data designed to test variables that affect student success and to define key terms such as persistence, retention and completion. The Testing Student Success Data group, comprised of a diverse set of HLC member institutions, conducted research to test variables on a variety of student bodies. The Defining Student Success Data group, which included representatives from HLC member institutions, national higher education organizations, state agencies and national data organizations, identified ways in which HLC may contribute to the student success conversation. The group published recommendations for changing the student success conversation, differentiation for disaggregation of student success data, and developing a standard glossary of terms related to student success.

Defining Student Success Data: Recommendations for Changing the Conversation (December 2018)

Defining Student Success Data: Recommendations for Differentiation for Disaggregation (January 2019)

Defining Student Success Data: Recommendations for a Glossary of Terms (February 2019)

Testing Student Success Data: Findings and Recommendations (March 2019)

Graduation Rate Survey

2016–2018

As part of a national initiative to increase focus on helping institutions improve retention and completion rates, in 2016 HLC surveyed a sample group of institutions for information that will help HLC understand how institutions track students’ academic outcomes, how institutions have been working to improve those outcomes, and the contexts affecting specific student populations.

C-RAC (the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions) summarized the findings of the studies conducted by the seven regional accreditors, including HLC, and published a report in 2018.

HLC’s Survey Findings (July 2017)

C-RAC Summary Report (February 2018)