Student Success Outcomes
Student success is a core element of quality assurance in higher ed. To ensure the quality of educational offerings, it is imperative for an institution to know its students — their educational intent, performance while enrolled, and experiences after ending their studies.
In the coming year, HLC will increase our attention to this topic with new policies, procedures and research efforts.
On This Page
HLC’s Student Success Goals
1. To identify concerns that require institutional attention or HLC follow-up.
Activities
- Evaluate institutions under Core Component 3.G. of the revised Criteria for Accreditation, effective September 1, 2025.
- Expand HLC’s risk indicator process to include student success indicators.
2. To identify opportunities for HLC to support institutions.
Activities
- Continue supporting institutions’ work to improve student success outcomes through the Student Success Academy, annual conference presentations and other learning opportunities.
- Modify the Open Pathway to offer eligible institutions the opportunity to pursue a Quality Initiative focused on student success in lieu of the mid-cycle Assurance Review.
- Continue research into how institutions track and use student success outcomes data.
3. To increase transparency with students and other stakeholders.
Activities
- Continue publishing student success information in HLC’s Directory of Institutions. This includes links to each member institution’s profile in the College Scorecard and College Navigator, as well as a link to student achievement data reported by the institution in the Institutional Update.
Revised Criteria for Accreditation
Effective: September 1, 2025
HLC’s foundational expectations related to student success are set in the Criteria for Accreditation. The current Criteria require institutions to demonstrate improvement through goals and strategies that improve their retention, persistence and completion rates. In the revised Criteria for Accreditation, which will go into effect September 1, 2025, student success outcomes are addressed more comprehensively. Specifically, the revised Criteria include Core Component 3.G, Student Success Outcomes, which states:
The institution’s student success outcomes demonstrate continuous improvement, taking into account the student populations it serves and benchmarks that reference peer institutions.
Student success outcomes include any measures demonstrating the rate at which an institution’s students achieve or mark progress toward completion, educational intent or other goals that are relevant to the institution’s mission. See HLC’s glossary of terms in the revised Criteria and Assumed Practices for the complete definition of student success outcomes.
The revised Core Component 3.G also sets the expectation that institutions will consider peer institutions in assessing and working to improve their student success outcomes. To identify its peers, an institution should consider colleges and universities that have similar missions, student bodies, or other characteristics, such that they provide meaningful comparisons by which the institution may judge its performance. For more information about this requirement, see HLC’s Revised Criterion 3 webinar and Providing Evidence for the Revised Criteria.
HLC Policies and Processes Related to Student Success
In addition to the revised Criteria, HLC’s Board of Trustees also adopted policy changes in February 2025 that modify existing processes to evaluate and support institutions’ work in student success.
Student Success Indicators
For many years, HLC has evaluated institutions annually for financial and non-financial risk indicators. This year, we expanded the risk indicator process to include student success indicators based on educational outcome measures that are well-defined and widely used by institutions, researchers and policy makers. Institutions will be required to participate in additional evaluative activities if they meet certain indicator conditions. The student success indicators were developed with extensive feedback from institutions and peer reviewers as part of HLC’s Evaluating Student Success Outcomes initiative.
Student Success Quality Initiative
Beginning in September 2025, HLC will provide certain eligible institutions additional flexibility to focus more on student success improvements during their accreditation cycle. Specifically, institutions on the Open Pathway that meet certain conditions will be given the option to pursue a Quality Initiative focused on student success in Years 1-4 in lieu of the mid-cycle Assurance Review that typically occurs in Year 4.
Student Success Research
In addition to building student success into our processes, HLC is committed to learning more about how member institutions track and use student success outcome data.
In 2024, HLC launched our Evaluating Student Success Outcomes initiative to improve our ability to track student success outcomes at member institutions. We focused on educational student success outcomes in the first year of this project, which led to the development of the student success indicator process described above.
We continued our research by looking at post-college labor market and other economic outcome measures, hosting focused groups with HLC member institutions that had strong educational outcomes, institutions utilizing a third-party data aggregator and state higher education agencies. Following these discussions, HLC concluded that the ability of institutions, accreditors and other higher education entities to collect, analyze and utilize economic outcomes data in decision making remains limited. Specifically, there are limitations on data access, literacy, accuracy, and completeness of outcomes information that are beyond the individual control of institutions and agencies alike. Looking ahead, HLC is committed to continuing to collaborate with the Triad, institutions and additional third parties to explore these underlying challenges so that we may ultimately better understand and support student success.
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