NWCCU Advances Higher Ed Accreditation with 3-Year Bachelor Degree and Collaboration:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 228 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Guests Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy and Dr. Selena M. Grace

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast 228 – Sonny Ramaswamy & Selena Grace

Introduction of Guests

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guests today are Sonny Ramaswamy and Selena Grace, President and EVP respectively of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

Backgrounds of Sonny and Selena

Drumm McNaughton: Sonny has had a long career in higher education and government service, having served as Dean of Oregon State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, Director of Purdue’s Agricultural Research Program, University Distinguished Professor and Head of Entomology at Kansas State, and Professor of Entomology at Mississippi State. Prior to joining the Northwest Commission, he served in the Obama administration where he directed the National Institute of Food and Agriculture that funds research and education in food, agriculture, and natural resources.

Selena Grace has been with Northwest since 2020, and before that served as Vice Provost for Academic Strategy and Institutional Effectiveness at Ohio state university and chief academic officer at the Idaho State Board of Education, where she was the primary author and manager of the “Complete College Idaho” plan. Selena is a first-generation college graduate and was a member of the inaugural cohort at WICHE Western Academic Leadership Academy.

Northwest Commission’s Innovations

Drumm McNaughton: The Northwest Commission is one of the most innovative of all the accreditation bodies, and Sonny and Selena joined me today to talk about their initiative for a three-year bachelor’s degree that started as a pilot over one year ago and other areas where they are changing and improving the accreditation process.

Sonny, Selena, welcome to the program.

Dr. Selena Grace: Thank you.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Well, thanks very much. Drumm, it’s wonderful to be here with you and my colleague, Selena Grace.

Drumm McNaughton: I’m so much looking forward to this. When I talk about the Accreditors, Northwest, which you guys both represent, is up there at the top of my favorites. So I just want to start off by saying thank you for all the great things you’re doing for higher ed and for the schools that you work with.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Thanks so much. I appreciate that very much.

Discussion on Accreditation

Drumm McNaughton: We are here today to talk about the current state of education, accreditation, and where it’s going. Specifically, where you two are taking the Northwest Commission. But before we get into that, would y’all mind giving you just a little bit of your background so the listeners understand who you are and why I admire you both so much.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Selena, you want to go first?

Dr. Selena Grace: Thank you. Selena Grace and I have been with the commission since early 2020, is the role, initially as a senior vice president and supporting our member institutions in the good work that they do in fulfilling their own mission and more recently I’ve moved into the role of executive vice president.

My background really is in policy. and supporting institutional innovation and improvement. I’ve had experience on institutional campuses, both as their accreditation liaison officer and as an evaluator, and also working at the state level, K 20 governing Board, for educational policy, primarily working with our post-secondary institutions.

So I have a long history in working with institutions and supporting innovation and growth and making sure that the policies actually support an institution’s ability to be innovative and do the good work that they need to do to support the success of all of our students. So that’s really the background that I come to this work from.

Selena’s Contributions and Complete College Idaho

Drumm McNaughton: And you were one of the key people of the “Complete College Idaho” plan. What was that?

Dr. Selena Grace: So, the “Complete College America” initiative started a number of years ago, and really what their work was intended to do was to break down the barriers that were impacting students’ ability to be retained and succeed. So what were those institutional barriers? And because we were a K 20 governing board, for all the public institutions in the state, we really had the ability to effect change at a large-scale level.

Getting our institutions and the state engaged in degree completion and supporting the degrees that we needed for jobs and growth was really important for us as a state and so that work began when “Complete College America” initially came out. They’ve gone through many iterations since they initially came out. But really it was getting the state to set a goal that we had a certain percentage of our individuals, our residents within the state, educated and with the right credentials that they needed to meet the workforce demands within the state and so that required a lot of different policy levers and engagement with the institutions. For example, one of the big things was remediation reform, and that was really a stopping point for students to be able to complete their degree.

Often students stopped out and so having the institutions look at that remedial coursework and eliminate some of those gaps and have co-requisites or integrated courses that eliminated that remedial option and so it was really about innovation within the state from a policy perspective.

Drumm McNaughton: Great. Thank you, Sonny. After hearing Selena’s background, I just say to myself, “oh my gosh, you are so fortunate to have her on your staff”. Please give us a little bit of your background. Because yours is as equally as fascinating.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Well, I tell you, we’re truly privileged to have Selena as one of our colleagues. She’s been an outstanding Standing addition to the organization. And now as our executive vice president, she has taken on very significant leadership roles as well. So that background that she just spoke to is really critically important. And when it comes to policy issues and things like that, Salina does an amazingly wonderful job for us. So, we’re truly privileged to have her here with us.

Sonny’s Background and Focus on Students

Sonny Ramaswamy: So my own background, Drumm, maybe I’ll just speak for maybe 30 seconds or maybe 60 seconds or something. I can go on for a very long time because as you know, I’ve been around the block a few times. So my background is in, I’m an entomologist. I’m, one of the world’s experts on insect sex, I like to say. And worked in the area of food and agriculture for a very long time and served as President Obama’s chief scientist for food and agriculture.

And then I , came here, just a little bit over six years ago. One of the first things that we did was to go through this whole process of review and revision of our standards and our requirements and our policies and things like that. And what we did was to focus, laser focus on students. And I think what sets us apart from our sister accreditors is that focus on student success and closing equity gaps. That’s the key that we talk about. And I used to go around, we’d talk about how “it’s the students stupid”, I co-opted Bill Clinton’s famous statement from the 92 elections. And it is about the students. And that’s what we focus on, for Selena and for my colleagues, it starts with and ends with students. Everything that we do is bearing that in our minds.

Drumm McNaughton: And that’s the way it has to be at the accreditation level, at the Department level, at the state level for the state boards of education, and most importantly at the college level.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yep. Very true. Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Obviously we’re facing a lot of problems, a lot of challenges in higher education, the declining enrollment, a lack of credibility, et cetera.

Role of Accreditation in Student Outcomes

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get into some of those challenges and what the role is of accreditation bodies, give us a little background on accreditation, on accrediting bodies. Maybe, a 90 second history and then what accreditors do that really can help student learning outcomes.

Sonny Ramaswamy: So I’ll start it then, Selena can pick up, as a wrap up as well. So, accreditors, this model of accreditation that we have in America, it is a, truly an American invention. There’s been no other across the globe. And then now in the recent past in the last say about 15, 20, 30 years or so others have started emulating as well.

So we’ve been around for well over 100 years. Particularly my sister accreditors they’ve been around since the late 1800s and It’s been about, quality assurance and accountability and things like that. And we came along, the Northwest Commission, has been around since 1917, and so well over 100 years.

And then really, it’s the GI bill, post second world war, and that created the sort of the construct that we see of the modern accreditation system that we’ve got in the United States. And then we got in quotes “recognized by the United States Department of Education” and we go through this process of being re recognized once every so often. And, then in the mid 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson was the President of the United States, the Higher Education Act is passed. And that further formalizes this whole process of accreditation itself. And really the bottom line about accreditation that we see that Selena and I work on.

Number one, it’s about quality assurance. That the students that are graduating from our institutions, there is a level of quality that employers, or other institutions where they transfer to, can rely on the idea that they’re actually have had a quality instruction. That’s number one.

Hand in hand with that is the accountability piece of it. That we, hold our institution accountable in part because the taxpayers of America, at the federal level, as well as if you’re a state funded institution at the state level, and if you’re a church supported or a private institution, it’s those funders of those, those students that are there. We hold them accountable on behalf of those entities that are providing that funding as well. That’s the second piece of it.

The third piece of it that we ascribed to, that Selena and I ascribed to, is the idea is that it is about continuous improvement. That every institution, even the best institution, where they have very, very high levels of graduation rates and retention rates and outcomes and things like that, even those institutions can do better. So that’s the approach that we use. It’s literally about continuous process improvement, and that’s the focus that we’ve got. And that’s, in a sort of a nutshell, is accreditation.

Dr. Selena Grace: Yeah. Thanks, Sonny.

The Triad in Accreditation

Dr. Selena Grace: I would just add, too, we’re really part of a triad. A lot of times institutional accreditors, there’s an expectation unknown to the public that it’s our responsibility for things that really are the state’s responsibility. And so we work in concert with the U. S. Department of Education through the requirement related to our own standards for recognition, but also working with states and laws that states pass that hold institutions accountable, or it could be tribal councils, or it could be some of the faith based organizations and their governing bodies.

But the recognition that we are really part of a triad of governing entities is really important. And I think one of the things too, and I always share this with people when I meet with them, that I love most about us as an accreditor, is that we truly do honor the unique mission of our member institutions.

 As Sonny mentioned, we have institutions that are faith based, that are tribal colleges, we have public, private, for profit. We have different institutional types, as far as health professions. And so really taking that institutional mission and holding them accountable to our standards and thereby assessing them on how they’re meeting their own institutional mission.

With that focus, as Sonny mentioned earlier, on student success. That includes an assessment of student learning, it includes an assessment of student achievement, and so incorporating student achievement metrics into our own standards, in which the institution is required to hold a mirror up to themselves and say, these are the things that we’re doing really well, and these are the things that we need to improve on. And so that continuous improvement, not an “I gotcha”, but a, “how do we get better?” Because if we don’t get better and we don’t focus on getting better, how then can we support the success of our students? So I would just add that those are really some other critical components of who we are as an accreditor.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, thank you. And just for the listeners who don’t understand what the triad is, could you just let folks know, please?

Dr. Selena Grace: Yeah, really. that’s a great question. So, the triad is three parts. It’s the U. S Department of Education and U. S. Department of Education sets policies and expectations for accreditors, and so we’re required to follow those guidelines. They set standards and expectations as well for institutions and what they’re required to do. So, they make up one leg of that three legged chair.

We make up another leg as an accreditor, and these are the expectations for institutions to be recognized or accredited by us.

But then states make up that other piece. So, states must authorize institutions to operate within their states. States also may have legislation that impacts, certainly the public institutions, but also likely their private institutions to operate in those states. So, they set guidelines and requirements and expectations.

So, the three in concert really set the framework of expectations for institutions to deliver degrees.

Sonny Ramaswamy: I’m sorry, Drumm, thanks so much for doing that. But a couple of items that I wanted to emphasize. The first one is I refer to the Higher Education Act, and that literally gives us the marching orders, which are then that act then is translated by the Department of Education into regulations.

And that’s what Selena is referring to is, we have to abide by the regulations. And our standards for accreditation, our eligibility requirements, our policies, our procedures and things like that, are aligned with those regulations that we get from the United States Department of Education. So we have our “Bible” in quotes that we look at, it is the accreditation handbook that we get from the feds that we use as well.

And then on the other side, in terms of the third leg of the triad, the authorities, the state authorities, and again, each state is a little bit different. In some states, privates and publics and for profits and nonprofits are all overseen by one entity. Like here in the state of Washington, WASAC, the Washington Student Achievement Council is the one that oversees everybody.

In contrast, in Oregon, the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission only has purview over the publics. The privates and fall out of it. And then in Utah, the privates and for profits and all those, they’re going through the Department of Commerce, so Brigham Young University goes through Department of Commerce, whereas University of Utah goes through USHE, the Utah State Higher Education Authority. So, there’s an interesting sort of mix that we’ve got, in America when you think about that third leg of the triad itself.

Drumm McNaughton: And one thing that I always remember is with the Education Department, they don’t hold institutions accountable themselves. They’re more concerned about the funding Title IV. They delegate that to the accreditors. Is that a fair statement?

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yes and no. So yes, so Title IV we’re in quotes considered, we, the accreditors, are considered to be the gatekeepers, right? That’s what’s bandied about by folks outside of us. Okay. And that’s in part true, but really the feds have very significant authority to march right in.

I’ll give you an example here. A few years ago, one of our institutions, without our knowledge, got smacked by the Department of Education. And this is, Concordia University, Portland. And I’m going to go ahead and name names. Okay. And they had been fined for irregularities that we didn’t know about, and we should have been informed of it.

Nobody informed us, and ultimately, that institution was shut down, in part because they had these shenanigans that they participated in with a online program manager who was a basically a headhunter and they took a lot of the money from the institution for headhunting those students. Their enrollments kept going up, but the money that they got was not going up. So, in any case, you do have situations like that. Certainly, the federal government has the marching rights.

And so does the state government. So WSAC, if there’s any, anything that is amiss or remiss at an institution could potentially walk in without our knowledge, we hope that they keep us informed of these kinds of things, but it’s possible that they could do that as well.

Drumm McNaughton: That makes perfect sense and thank you for educating me even more. You get a PhD, you think, “oh, yeah, you know, I’m well educated”, but then you get into other things, it’s like, “no, I may be educated, but I’m not workforce ready.

So swapping horses a little bit and thank you both for that excellent background. I think that’s really important for institutions to understand the triad, the various pieces of how the accreditation works. Cause most institutions don’t know that. They just have the relationship with their accreditor, which should be their primary relationship, but just like Concordia, you can get in trouble with the big dogs and they got way bigger hammers than anybody else.

How Accrediting Bodies Solve Challenges in Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: So given the challenges that we’ve got nowadays, you know declining enrollment, lack of credibility, etc. What is the role of the accrediting bodies and accreditation in solving these challenges.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yeah. Well, I joke that, you may remember that on television, they used to be this commercial that, BASF used to have, and they would say, we don’t make the things that you use, but we make it better. So accreditors, like us, like Selena and me, we don’t go and teach, we don’t do the classes, we don’t do the enrollments or anything like that, but we make it better by creating these standards and policies and procedures and requirements and all that.

Again, remember, it all emanates from the federal government’s Higher Education Act and the regulations from the Department of Education. Right?

So, from that perspective, per se, we don’t have a role to play, that direct role. What we do is, by our standards, we apply those standards. And going back to the very first thing that I talked about as an accreditor, it’s about quality assurance, and it is focusing on the fundamentals for higher education institutions. Which is the education of those students. “It’s the students stupid.” Making sure you’ve got all the courses, you’re providing them the advising, you’re providing them the experiential opportunities, you’re providing them the counseling, and then the post educational career placement type opportunities.

All of this is part of that enterprise that we’ve got, and so you got a couple of things going on in regards to the enrollment declines that we see and the sort of the lack of, in quotes, “lack of value” that is seen in higher education that even as recently as July of this year, Gallup did a survey and said that half the population in America couldn’t care less for higher education. And the other half said, that’s fantastic. Right? And just like everything else in America that we’ve got. But it goes to that quality assurance and making sure that these things are being offered.

The intent really is there’s a promise made by the institution. If a student comes into my institution, they get the education, they’re able to achieve their aspirational goals of what that education is. And then, in a reasonable amount of time, they complete with the, I paraphrase Pogo, “I’ve seen the enemy and he’s us”, and I talk about this at our institutions as well, but we’ve not done a good job of demonstrating that value proposition. And I’ll come back to what accreditors can do in terms of value proposition, but I think Selena has a couple of things to add to this as well.

Dr. Selena Grace: Thanks, Sonny. Yeah, I think part of this process is really, it’s continuous improvement. Fundamentally, it’s not just institution’s ability to continuously improve and assess themselves, but it’s our own ability to assess ourselves as accreditors. The revision to our standards that we went through in 2020 was frankly phenomenal. It really was innovative and transformative for us as an accreditor. It shifted our focus from compliance and those compliance expectations to a student focused, student centered, standards framework. And so we really are focused on student learning and student achievement and we ask that our institutions do that.

As Sonny mentioned early on, we go through our own recognition process with the U. S. Department of Education, to be recognized as an accreditor. And part of that process for us is really looking at, what are we seeing in findings from our institutions?

What are our own standards, how do our own standards and expectations fit into the current climate that we’re in, the changing times, technology, innovation, demands by the community within states, and so we really took a look at all of that and feedback from our institutions in 2020 and fundamentally shifted our focus. And so that continuous improvement on ourselves as an accreditor as we hold our institutions accountable to.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yeah, just to pick up and to wrap up on that sort of thread, that it literally is about that quality assurance and continuous improvement, right? We don’t worry about the accountability, money, Title IV, things like that. That’s there. But our focus primarily as an accreditor, and that’s the value proposition, is that idea that there’s some quality that’s assured from these institutions that are educating your student, your child that comes to those institutions as well.

One of the things that we started doing, going back to the review and revision of our standards, and then we flipped this whole thing saying “students is number one, compliance is a supporting actor”, right? It’s important, but it’s not the primary focus. It’s about the students. And we incorporated in it as well, the idea that we want data informed approaches to doing this, and we want it to be disaggregated data. Because, we were using averages, and one of my all-time favorite statistician’s jokes, is “my head’s in the freezer, my feet are in the oven, on average I’m okay”, right?

So, averages only do that. Whereas if you take a deeper dive, if you were to go ahead and disaggregate the data. Selena’s own background, her own personal narrative and things like that is really critically important as well to think of. We’ve got to break it down. We’ve got to see what those different groups of students are doing, where they come from. First gen student, Pell eligible student, you’re a student that comes from a rural background, you’re a student that is from a marginalized community, from a disadvantaged community.

These are the things that we want to look at, not just the idea, there’s some racial stuff and ethnicity and things like that, but really it’s about what kind of background do you have? How do you come into this? You didn’t go to an international school that offers international baccalaureate or advanced placement, you went to a rural community school. What kind of education did you get there? So incumbent on us to make sure that we track those kinds of things. That’s the value that we bring as an accreditor.

Dr. Selena Grace: I think it’s really important to add to that is, Mission is fundamental in that assessment. So each institution’s unique mission, what we’re telling them is you must know the students that you serve. We’re not telling you what type of students you should have or what your mix should be, but we’re telling them, “you need to know and understand who your students are and how they are or are not succeeding”. And if they’re not, what is it you need to do to ensure that they are successful, right? You have a promise by enrolling them to give them the support and services to ensure their success. And so you must understand the demographics, the diversity of your students, and whatever it looks like for your unique institution and your mission. And we know it’s different for all of our institutions.

Drumm McNaughton: And that is so critical because you’ve got to meet the student where they are. Each institution has to be mission driven. When I’m talking about accreditation, with new folks, somebody who’s, hey, I want to start a college or a university or whatever. I say, “well, accreditation is one of the keys”. You’ve got to have state licensure, but accreditation basically is, there’s a baseline set of standards that you need to meet, and after that it’s the innovation, it is the systemic growth of your institution that needs to be there all the time. And each time you go for an accreditation visit, whether it’s for eligibility, whether it’s your initial accreditation, or reaffirmation, you need to be able to demonstrate that you have improved and you have the systems in place that allow for that improvement.

Dr. Selena Grace: Yes.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I got one right. Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe I will succeed in this postdoc era. Who knows?

Innovations and Accelerated Programs

Drumm McNaughton: So in looking at these value propositions, what’s going on in higher ed, how is Northwest innovating to make significant changes based on the current marketplace? I know one of those things people are saying, “it cost too much for a degree” or “it takes too long to get a degree”, etc. Tell us a little bit about your accelerated programs. I know you’re doing a couple of pilots right now.

Sonny Ramaswamy: So before I launch into that part of it on the accelerated baccalaureate program and all that, talk a little bit about innovations. So where that comes from really is innovations, we don’t drive it. Again, as I said, invoking the BASF commercial. We don’t make those things. We don’t create it and all that. We only make it better! Right?. So the innovations are generated by the institutions that come to us. We have what we refer to as the “substantive change process”, and we encourage our institutions to use their imagination to come together with great ideas, and come to us, and my colleagues, Selena and our other colleagues. They’re reviewed, we may constitute a panel to look at it very carefully, and we also track it. And we encourage our institutions to come through with innovations. And those innovations could be, say, a certificate program or a micro credential or some such thing that they want to come up with, or maybe it’s a new major, maybe it’s a new degree program and things like that.

We, there are some institutions that go around claiming that, my creditor won’t let me do this. I think that’s a bogus, fake argument is what it is. We say. Y’all come talk to us and we’ll, help you. We’ll give you some feedback. I think actually Selena works very diligently with her portfolio institutes to make sure that they know the rules of engagement, how to go about putting these things together and that feedback is given.

Also, by the way, Selena and I don’t say, “oh yeah, bless you, go ahead and do this”. What happens is it comes to our, particularly to our commissioners. Ultimately, it’s the commissioners that need to make a determination. Ultimately, it’s these peer evaluators that help us think these things through as well.

So that’s part of the context of innovations. And we encourage them. Think of how do you reduce the cost of education? How you enhance the experiences that students go through, these high impact practices. Okay, all of this is part of the mix that we get when we’re thinking of these substantive change proposals that come to us.

And then the accelerated baccalaureate program, I can speak to it in just a second, but Selena may have something to add to this substantive change process and where these innovations, they emanate from and how our role is to help them think this through and come up with a path forward.

Selena?

Building Relationships with Institutions

Dr. Selena Grace: Yeah, no, I think one of the ways that we’re able to support more innovation with our institutions is that, frankly, we fundamentally changed our relationship with our member institutions. We don’t see ourselves as coming in with a hammer. It’s a carrot. And how do we better understand what you’re trying to do? And one of the ways that we approach that relationship is we have a portfolio model. So we have three senior vice presidents and myself as the executive vice president, and we have an assigned portfolio of institutions that we work with closely. So that allows us to better understand and build relationships and increase conversation that wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have those relationships. And so it helps foster the willingness for a campus to come to us and say, “Hey, here’s what we’re trying to do. What do we need to think about?” And for us to say, “well, we don’t really have a policy for this or the policy might be exclusion might provide some limitations. Let us go back and brainstorm how we might address some policy modifications”. My favorite thing to say is, “A policy can always be rewritten. It’s not written in stone and if you feel like it is, well, let’s break the stone”. Right? We can modify policy to support innovation and growth within the institution.

And so we don’t see ourselves as an obstacle. And if an institution is looking to do something that will really support student success, well, then we’re going to find a way to work with them and support that, and we’re going to brainstorm all the possible ways with them. They’re not on that journey alone. So I think that, relationship is really critical to that process.

Sonny Ramaswamy: And picking up on that word relationship, really, it is this high contact approach that we use. I think as an accreditor, we’re quite unique in that because Selena and the others, they’re really in constant touch. The one thing that we don’t want is surprises. And we want to know what’s going on. We’re constantly in touch with our institutions. And I joke that it’s always like an in your face approach that we use. And that’s very helpful because we know what’s going on. And anytime they want to create something new, they’ll contact Selena and the others. That, “hey, we’re thinking of thus and such”, and we also help them think this through that if you don’t inform us, you could potentially be sanctioned, by the way. You started something new without us knowing about it, you could be sanctioned as well. So there are some rules of engagement that, again, it’s been really well said. We have all these educational programs and webinars. There’s a constant level of engagement that we’ve got with our institutions.

Drumm McNaughton: One of the things that I’ve learned years ago on an accreditation visit was, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. And that to me epitomizes what you’re doing with your member institutions.

Dr. Selena Grace: I would just say absolutely! 100%. I think, as liaisons, we get to know our institutions intimately. And we care very much about them and their students and the success of them. And they know that we care about them, and we’re committed to them, and that we always seek to understand where they’re at and where they’re coming from. So I think that passion and commitment is evident in the relationships.

Sonny Ramaswamy: Yeah. I, in fact, the word relationships or relations is synonymous with accreditation, I think, from my perspective, from our perspective, that’s the first one we use. You got to do it with humility and humanity. You can’t go in there with a stick, and as a compliance organization. We used to be like that, back in the good old days, but we’re really about these relationships and we want to know what’s going on. We were here to truly, we’re here to help you support you.

Drumm McNaughton: From what I know about the both of you and having, significant interactions with you, Sonny, over the years, you are all about relationships, and this just reflects who you are as a person.

Conclusion and Next Episode Announcement

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening, and a special thank you to our guests, Sonny Ramaswamy and Selena Grace, President and Executive Vice President of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

Tune in next week when we conclude this episode, we talk about the specifics on what Northwest is doing, where it’s going, and some of the great things that institutions need to be thinking about going forward to make higher ed more relevant for the workforce development and things along those lines.

See you next week.