SACSCOC Accreditation Substantive Change Updates and Standards Revision Through 2026:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 301 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Stephen L. Pruitt

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast  301 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Stephen L. Pruitt

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:31] Meet Dr Stephen Pruitt

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

My guest today is Dr. Stephen Pruitt, President of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or known as SACSCOC. Stephen assumed the role about six months ago, taking over from long time President Bell Wheland, and since then, he’s been leading a focused hundred day plan, emphasizing clarity, consistency, and institutional trust and accreditation.

He’s brought a lot of changes to SACS since he took over the commission, streamlined the accreditation pathways, modernized governance structures, and advanced the student-centered approach to accountability. At the December Board of Trustees meeting, they approved major substantive change reforms, eliminating more than half the existing categories, and shifting others to presidential review, thus reducing approval times to as little as one week.

Steven’s leadership reflects a commitment to transparent efficient accreditation that supports innovation, protects academic quality and centers on student success. And he joins me today to talk about SACSCOC accreditation. What’s going on there? And what’s next for SACS?

Stephen, welcome to the show.

Stephen Pruitt: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I appreciate you letting me come.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, it’s my pleasure.

[00:01:55] Big Shoes to Fill

Drumm McNaughton: I’m looking forward to a great conversation you just took over for an institution at SACSCOC, Bell  Wheland, big shoes to fill. But having gotten to know you a bit, I have no doubt you’re going to be able to do that.

Stephen Pruitt: Nobody can fill the shoes of Bell. She has been, like you said, an institution. I would probably dare say an accreditation icon for the last 20 years. And stepping into that role that, the good thing is she’s a good friend. And so maybe not so good for her, but good for me, I have her cell number. And I am inheriting an incredible staff. And it’s nice to walk into a situation where you know and felt so comfortable with the person who had just such great leadership over the years.

Drumm McNaughton: Absolutely. I couldn’t have said it better. She was in the role for 20 years and has done a incredible job there. But now you’ve got the range. You’ve been in there at about six months or so. And you had a hundred day plan.

[00:02:59] From Teacher to Leader

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get to all that, please give us a little bit of your background.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes, that’s probably the hardest part I have is talking about me. But, in large part, because if I give you the full CV, it just sounds like I couldn’t keep a job.

Drumm McNaughton: You and me both.

Stephen Pruitt: At the end of the day, what I tell people is I’m a teacher. That was where I started. I fell in love with chemistry, but more important, fell in love with the idea of teaching and the opportunities that afforded. And so even years away from the classroom, now, if you see me present somewhere, you’re going to go, Yes, he was a teacher. He can’t stand still. He keeps asking people to get into groups.

All that kind of thing. So Yes, after I left the classroom, I spent some time in two different State Departments of Ed. I was in the Georgia State Department of Ed, and then I was actually the Commissioner of education in Kentucky. Depending on your vernacular, it’s the state superintendent, commissioner, whatever. But most recently I was the president of the Southern Regional Education Board. Which is a interstate compact of the 16 southern states that was formed to support education leaders and policymakers in education, as I used to like to say, from pre-K to gray. So it was across that full spectrum, that full board.

[00:04:27] Relationships Across the Region

Drumm McNaughton: Well, that certainly prepared you for the SACS job with those different type of, you know, regulatory bodies, compliance, but also too, working with the states who really make up the predominance of the membership at SACSCOC.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes, absolutely. It’s nice to walk in with a Rolodex, for anybody under 50, go and Google that if you’re not sure what that means, but it’s nice to walk in and there’s already, I have relationships with system heads, with legislators, with governors across our region. And so it certainly is a big benefit for me. And it was a, it was nice to be able to have, having those relationships, to not have to completely get rid of those relationships by moving into a new position.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, oh, absolutely. And you know, one of the things I found, and, and you tell me if, if I’m right on this, when you make a friend in higher ed, you’ve got a friend for your entire career, possibly even your entire life.

Stephen Pruitt: I think that’s true. I think that’s very true. I have people in that Rolodex that I met 25 years ago and still keep in contact with. They’re not just those people that end up in your phone that you, as you scroll, you go, oh, I haven’t heard from them in a while. They’re actually people that stay on your radar.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly, and in a position where you are, you want them on your radar because you want good, timely feedback from them. Are we headed in the right directions with SACS? You know, what could we be doing better? All those things.

Stephen Pruitt: Absolutely, Yes.

[00:06:02] How SACSCOC Really Works

Stephen Pruitt: SACSCOC is at the end of the day, is a membership organization and people would do well to remember that. And I come into this for that full understanding. Yes, at the end of the day, of course we’re going to hold people accountable, but we do that by leveraging the membership that we have.

Drumm McNaughton: And people don’t remember that it, frankly, it’s not you or Bell or whoever the president of SACS is. It’s the commission of what, 75 different people on the commission. I think you’ve got one of the bigger ones.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes. We’re the face of it. I’m the one that people are going to probably throw darts at the end of the day. But it’s not decisions that I’m making. These are our committees. It goes through a three-tiered process that goes through multiple committees, through multiple iterations.

And it’s why you often see at the beginning, a higher number of things that maybe an institution has questions, our committee has questions about their compliance, but by the time it gets to the board, they may have none. Because in that process that they have better opportunities to explain or more information gets surfaced.

And so it really does, it’s a dynamic process. It’s pretty fascinating to watch. It feels long, I can imagine if you’re at an institution.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh yes.

[00:07:23] Compliance and the Triad

Stephen Pruitt: Dynamic of people coming together and doing this peer review, it’s what makes American accreditation.

It’s the difference in a government accreditation where you’ve got people who are in living the same life you’re living, sitting in the same seats you’re sitting in, who are helping evaluate that your institution against a set of standards that holds that quality across the board.

Drumm McNaughton: And that is so critical. There is the compliance aspect, which you know, as an accrediting body you have to do, but that’s one of the reasons that there is the triad, the department, the state attorneys general, and then the accreditors so that it’s not all one institution, or one part of the triad holding all the institutions accountable.

It’s supposed to be all three for different perspectives.

Stephen Pruitt: Absolutely. And it does and it’s served us well for a hundred years. We were originally created by a set of what we now call R1 institutions who said we want somebody to be a third party that can come in and evaluate, are we providing quality education to our students?

And over time when the triad gets created the reality that states’ rights do rule the day in terms of when legislation is passed, when regulatory things are passed. But that triangle, that triad, is so important because I, and I think you said it perfectly, it’s the perspective. It’s the different perspective that each group brings to the table.

Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm. It sure is.

[00:09:03] SACS 2.0 Toward Innovation

Drumm McNaughton: Tell us a little bit about SACSCOC. When I talk about different accreditors, SACS has been, for better or for worse, I use SACS as an example of more compliance based, whereas NECHE or WASC or Northwest tends to be baseline compliance and more innovation. So tell us about SACS and tell me that I’m wrong because SACSCOC is changing away from full compliance.

Stephen Pruitt: At the end of the day—

Drumm McNaughton: Sorry, that was pretty blunt.

Stephen Pruitt: I, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve had similar questions before. At the end of the day, all accreditors are charged with the compliance aspect because it is the gateway to federal money for their students. So you’re never going to get away from that completely.

And I would say that SACSCOC, by and large, historically, has played much stronger role in on the compliance aspect of relationships with their institutions. We’re not going to be that way in SACS 2.0. We are doing so many other things. We’re getting some things planned that really do put us into a place of innovation.

It puts us into a place of adding to the knowledge base of what quality higher education is. It puts us into a place where we can better serve our institutions. While the compliance will always be an aspect of it, leveraging compliance to get to innovation is actually the place that we want to move.

We want our institutions to say, yes, we’ve gotta do these things for SACS, but how could we actually do something bigger, special, and more focused for our students and for our community, and ultimately for the workforce. Because at the end of the day, our institutions are preparing the workforce. So I don’t want to ever hear, oh, we can’t do that because SACS says we can’t.

We’re going to work hard to change that.

[00:11:11] Substantive Change Fast Track

Drumm McNaughton: And I see you doing that with your, you know, first six months, your a hundred day plan, all of those things. You’ve made some amazing changes already. Some of the ones you know, you’ve approved changes to the sub change reforms. You know, eliminating more than half the existing categories, shifting others to presidential review, reducing timelines for approval.

These are all things that are critical, especially in today’s day and age of needing lightning fast changes.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes, we can’t be in a business anymore of, all right, mail us what you need. Once we receive it in the mail, we’ll do our evaluation. We’ll take it to the board. I think that we’re in a, a time of our lives, of a time in our history where people need to be able to be flexible, mobile, and react quickly to the lay of the land.

You, I know here in Georgia, for instance. Georgia, at least for a time, became Hollywood East. There was this huge boom of Marvel movies and all that stuff was being filmed in Georgia because of all the tax credits. Institutions needed to be able to respond to offer new majors, to offer new degrees that met that industry need.

I use that one because it’s probably one of the biggest ones that people will hear. But we’re seeing the same thing across the board. Healthcare, we’re seeing more around logistics and advanced manufacturing and engineering. And just across that board, our institutions need to be prepared, need to be ready, they need to be able to recruit. And the flip side of that coin is we’ve gotta be flexible enough internally that we are able to respond quickly and that we’re able to provide support where necessary. Maybe guidance where necessary. But at the end of the day, what we need to do is trust our institutions.

And that is a component of where we are eliminated over half of the sub change. They were things that were not required by the federal government. And they were things that I believe at the end of the day, we’ve gotta trust our institutions to do the right thing by their students and by their communities.

Drumm McNaughton: And that is the key by the student, by the communities. If you keep what’s best for the student in mind, always, then you’re not going to go afoul.

Stephen Pruitt: My number one rule, students first always. My first staff meeting, and probably every day since then, somebody has to hear me say, students first, always. Or I’m asking the question, how does this benefit students? And if the answer is eh, and there’s a little hesitation, okay, then that’s probably not something we need to be in the business of.

We don’t, of course, have direct facing with students. We don’t educate students directly. But we can make decisions. We can provide a framework that enhances an institution’s ability to do that. And that’s where we really want to go.

Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:26] VP Liaisons and Rapid Response

Drumm McNaughton: How is the role of your VP liaisons with the institutions? How has that changed in all the changes that you’re making?

Stephen Pruitt: It’s interesting because one of the things with our VP liaisons, and I assume you’re asking about the ones that are actually are SACSCOC VPs, SACSCOC is, to my knowledge, they’re the only ones who not just provide a VP to each institution. A lot of our accredited partners do that. But we have a specific VP that gets assigned to a specific institution and that becomes the mode of communication.

They attend all the committee meetings. They are on the ground. They’re not sitting in Decatur answering phones. They are actually out in the field. We actually have we have four seasons in SACSCOC, unlike Atlanta who only has four if you count football. We actually have four seasons but they’re called fall travel season, in-house season, fall in-house season, spring travel season, and spring in-house season. They are on the road constantly. In fact, they’ve already hit the road here in January. And so, that part hasn’t changed and it won’t, because I believe that’s been a staple for SACSCOC. It’s been something our institutions, at this point, they not only do they enjoy it, they expect it. I think if I were to make some announcement that Yes, you’re not going to have your own vice president on the ground with you anymore. I think that would be a major issue. As far as how they have reacted to the change, let me just start with a quick anecdote that I, it was pretty emblematic of how this has worked with the staff.

We were all away at a conference and so we had a mini retreat. And that’s where I rolled out the a hundred day plan for the first time. So this was in I guess September. All right. And there’s a scene in the West Wing where Bartlett and Leo call the senior staff in and Bartlett says, we’re going to do these things.

And he named off several policy things. And as he gets to the end, the senior staff turns away from the President and Leo and starts talking to each other about, we need to call this person. We need to get this meeting we need— and so they start. At that meeting, I had that same experience where I was telling them, hey, here are the things I want to do with our rollout or with our a hundred day plan.

And they immediately start jumping into the planning. There was no resistance, there was no bad body language. It was immediate to say, yes, we want to roll on this. We we see the benefit here. And it wasn’t trying to just please the president because by the time we got back to the office, we had 13 committees that had been established.

They were working on the implementation strategies within a week of those committees being done. It was just wham, they are really getting up and going. They’re excited about things like our rapid response initiative that we’re just about to kick off where institutions who are struggling, we can send a three member team in that can help be on the ground and help you think through, I’m having this issue with the finances. Okay, who do we need to connect you with? And not just SACSCOC staff, but who, what other institution can we get on the phone with you right now and help walk you through this issue?

We do this informally already. We actually had a couple of institutions in the Decatur office in the last month that came in to meet with our director of institutional finance, our vice presidents. And so we’ve done that a while. It’s just we’re going to more formalize that.

And the vice presidents are so excited about that. They’re just beside themselves.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, that they have all of this great, and, and the VP’s liaisons for all of the accreditors have this great experience. And up until this point, in many accreditors, it’s been more from a, are you doing this? We’re not allowed to be consultants to you. Whereas it sounds like you’re taking that to the role, yes, you’re in charge of compliance, et cetera, et cetera, but you’re also there to help consult, to make your schools under your portfolio successful, and you have these other resources that you can call in to help elevate the advice that you give. That’s brilliant.

Stephen Pruitt: I never use the word brilliant when I’m talking about anything I came up with. But the thing is we’ve got these people who have this incredible knowledge base. They see what’s going on. They lived it. A lot of them I were liaisons at their own institutions.

We have a few former presidents that are vice presidents now. And so there’s just this incredible breadth of knowledge. But more importantly, because of how we’re structured, they see what other institutions are doing. And I believe SACSCOC can be a center of best practice that puts us into a different plane that Yes we can’t and the vice presidents won’t say, if you do X, you’ll be compliant.

What they can say though is, our experience shows us that institutions that have done these things, and if you pull off the implementation of these, it tends to go over well with committees. And so it does put them into a place where they’re not making determinations of compliance. And that’s important that everybody understands.

Drumm McNaughton: Well it’s the commission’s roll.

Stephen Pruitt: It’s, Yes, exactly. Exactly. Our role can’t be helping or prohibiting anybody from being compliant. But what we can do is provide opportunities for conversation with other institutions and provide with a base knowledge that, or a breadth of knowledge, I guess I should say, that just provides institutions with good guidance that then they have to take and localize to their own institution.

The way I describe it is, we should be about finding unique solutions to common challenges. A lot of institutions have common challenges, but every solution looks different.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes, it, it does. And the beauty of what you’re talking about is it’s not necessarily striving for compliance. You’re striving for what’s best for the students, which is in itself compliant.

Stephen Pruitt: Just way back when President Kennedy announced that we were going to go to the moon, no astronaut ever set the goal to get to the moon. They set the goal to get home. If we say our goal is compliance, we will never see excellence. And so my belief on it is, yes, compliance is part of a function of an accreditor, but if we simply stop at compliance, we’re never going to get the moonshot.

Drumm McNaughton: No.

[00:21:51] Sandbox Innovation and Telling Stories

Drumm McNaughton: One of the things that really struck me when we spoke last week was you were talking about SACS becoming a sandbox for innovation. Tell me a little more about that, please.

Stephen Pruitt: I am so very excited about this. It’s still in the baking stage. You, we, it’s not out of the oven yet, but here’s the—

Drumm McNaughton: Does it smell good though?

Stephen Pruitt: It smells really good.

And lots of chocolate and caramel to go with it.

Drumm McNaughton: I’m there.

Stephen Pruitt: It’s, what’s exciting about it is, and I, we may talk about this at another time, I’ve, I started this series called Law or Lore for the opposite reason, but aligned to this—

Drumm McNaughton: I’m sorry. What was that? Law or lore.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes, sorry.. The Southern accent doesn’t always play that out. But the idea is there’s all, there’s always this we can’t do that because SACS won’t let us, or we can’t do this because there’s a standard against it. Now sometimes that’s true, but a lot of the time it’s the interpretation.

And unfortunately, even more times it’s where someone else had an interpretation that told that person about the interpretation. So it’s actually two interpretations off, right?

Drumm McNaughton: Sounds like a game of telephone.

Stephen Pruitt: It’s a game of giant telephone. It’s the the old Laugh In, it’s this, the party to whom I’m speaking kind of thing.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, yes. I, and I’m, I’m dating myself because I can remember Lily Tomlin saying that.

Stephen Pruitt: Me too. And so the idea of the law or lore was to get people to stop thinking about what they’ve heard is appropriate and start actually going to look about, and so I do it in, I do it in common language. I do it like I’m speaking except I take the extra syllables of my speech out when I’m writing.

But the idea there is to get away from this mentality of we can’t , because. Right? Well, the Sandbox for Innovation takes that and goes another step. The idea here is there may be legitimate things that an institution says, we want to do this, but to do that, this or these standards, if we were to go through our reaffirmation right now, we might be found incompliant because of this new initiative.

What I want to do is say, okay, if that’s your case, come make the case. Come make the case that this is something you want to do and why these are in the way. Our question is going to be, so why are they in the way? So give us a good rationale. What are you going to do for students? What will this initiative do that’s special for students, for your community, for the workforce? And if we can come to an agreement that’s the case, and the institution is willing to say, hey, if we do this, we will have 85% of our students graduate in four to five years. Or 90% will pass their industry credential or whatever. And we agree on that metric. Then we set that aside for that period of time. And at the end of that period there’s a report that says, this is what we did for this initiative.

So it’s something that’s completely for institutions, won’t be required or forced to do it, but at the same time, you can no longer say, we’re not allowed to do that because SACS won’t let us. Come talk to SACS and let’s figure out a way to get it done.

What I’ve told our staff is I want us to be the organization that finds a way to say yes.

Drumm McNaughton: This initiative sounds like something that Larry Shall would do from NECHE.

Stephen Pruitt: Maybe. Actually, I haven’t talked to Larry about this. This is something that kind of bubbled up. It’s similar to, actually, it’s similar to a law that I helped pass in Georgia back in the day. That we did that, but it was in K 12, around K 12 accountability. And so I took that and have expanded it now that I’ve come to SACSCOC, to say, you know what? I think this is the same kind of deal. We can work directly with institutions and provide them with better opportunity. Let them tap into their creative juices and us not be a hindrance, but actually be a support.

Drumm McNaughton: Well to me, this taps right into your Torch Awards as well.

Stephen Pruitt: I agree. So one of the parts of the a hundred-day plan was that we wanted to do more to tell the stories of our institutions. Higher ed and if I was, up in public, this is where I would be required to use a phrase like the value add of higher ed or the, something like that.

The whole or the value proposition, I guess is the one that’s the in vogue now, so the value proposition of higher ed is in question. And not in politics, but across the general board, people are saying people are going to debt, the debt’s not able to pay for their, or the new career’s, not able to pay that debt off in a reasonable amount of time.

So higher ed, it’s not meeting the needs. And it is just not true. Georgetown Center has came out with a report recently that talked about, I can’t remember the exact number, but over 80%, 85% of the jobs of the next 10 years are going to require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

And we know that you can accumulate and receive more wealth with a baccalaureate degree or higher. But still there’s that thing, that nagging thing of it’s not really meeting its need. So it’s all about the money. Exactly. And so for us, what we want to do, because of where we’re positioned right now, usually if you hear SACSCOC in a news release, it’s because somebody got in trouble.

Drumm McNaughton: This is true.

Stephen Pruitt: And I don’t want that to be the only time people see SACSCOC in the news. So we get to see these institutions doing great and wonderful things. So we want to help tell that story.

[00:28:07] Center of Best Practice

Stephen Pruitt: But more importantly, going back to something I said earlier, we want to be that center of best practice. So not only do we want to celebrate the great story of an individual institution, we also want to be able to say to other institutions who may aspire to grow in a certain area, hey, see these folks that got these awards. It wasn’t because they needed new awards, it’s because they are had highlighted as doing some great things.

So go and let us introduce you to them. And let’s have a conversation about how you could improve in your campus, how to get there.

[00:28:43] Torch Awards Origin Story

Stephen Pruitt: So the Torch Awards really, and I’ll just tell you the funny part about it is, that meeting I was telling you about earlier that where I rolled out the a hundred day plan, I looked at our guy, Alexi, who is in charge of our data.

I said, Alexi, I want three data points that in December we can roll out as recognitions. Three. I just wanted three. Alexi comes to me two weeks later and he says we’ve got 70. I’m like, I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. 70. You mean like point 70? What? What are you talking about?

He said, no, we have 70. And he and his team had worked with this, with the recognitions committee and said, we’ve got all this data at our fingertips. We can create three awards that we can give out in December that aren’t based on one criteria, but they’re based on a collection of criteria that’s emblematic of student success, of affordability, and of postgraduate success with regard to their money.

Not many places will you find any data that says you can repay your tuition in three months based on disposable income? We have that kind of data. So the Torch Awards really came out of that, and it’s really exciting and our institutions, especially the ones that won, have really appreciated it.

Drumm McNaughton: Please give a shout out to those three institutions.

Stephen Pruitt: So here’s the other cool part. It’s not just three institutions.

[00:30:19] Affordability Winners

Stephen Pruitt: We actually were able to give awards in each of the, so we have six levels of institutions and those levels go from institutions that don’t give bachelor’s degree through those that give more than four PhD or doctoral level.

So for affordability, Trident Technical College in Level One, St. Petersburg College in level two, level three and four, we actually collapsed because we have smaller numbers in one of those areas. But New College of Florida in level five, we had Fayetteville State University and Northern Kentucky University. And in Florida, Atlantic University of Florida, and the University of the Cumberlands in level six.

And just again, for affordability, just a couple of quick things that looked at undergraduate tuition, it looked at institutional aid participation rate, it looked at average cost for low income students, it looked at the decade cost trend across low income students. So it was a collection of those things.

[00:31:22] Student Success Winners

Stephen Pruitt: Student success in completion, which deals with student faculty ratio, it deals with percent of academic and student support expenditures in the budget, retention rates for full-time dynamics of retention rates, it looks at Pell recipients, part-time students. I’m not reading all the indicators, but you can see it’s a, there’s a large range there.

The institutions that get a shout out here in level one, Beaufort County Community College, John A Gupton College, Pamlico Community College in level one. In level two, we had the Carolinas College of Health Sciences, Center College, Davidson College, and Wilford College. In levels three and four, we had Thomas University in level five, we had University of Richmond, and in level six we had Vanderbilt University.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes, it’s really cool.

Drumm McNaughton: impressive.

[00:32:14] Post College Success Winners

Stephen Pruitt: And then the last award was on post-college success. And here we looked at median earnings. We looked at the percent earnings above high school graduate, which is something that’s getting bantered around a lot in DC where we’re already ahead of that curve. We already are collecting that type of data.

And we looked at a number of years to recoup college investment with discretionary annual earnings, not just total, repayment rates, all that sort of thing. So for that level one, we had Marion Military Institute and Northern Virginia Community College. In level two we had Virginia Military Institute. In levels three and four, we had Trinity University. In level five, we had Washington and Lee University. And in level six we had Rice University and the University of Texas Medical Branch of Galveston.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow. Well, that’s an impressive list of schools.

Stephen Pruitt: It really is. It really is. And it’s fascinating.

[00:33:07] Public Data Dashboard Preview

Stephen Pruitt: We actually even found in this data, which by the way, we’re launching a new database that will be accessible to the public in the spring. And you’ll be able to go see your institution where you are in various measures and all that.

But one of the things, for instance, we found was in affordability. There’s this opinion that, oh, the big R1 institutions are just too expensive for students to go to. We actually found where in some states, the community college was more expensive than the R1 institution. Because of the different incentives that the R1 was able to provide.

So it was really pretty fascinating to, to get into that level of data and we’re going to be happy to share that data with others and with the public come the spring.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s going to be great. I’ve always believed you get what you measure and if you want to incentivize people to do better in certain ways, you recognize those who are doing a great job.

Stephen Pruitt: Absolutely agree.

[00:34:14] Data Into Evidence

Stephen Pruitt: Data is, I’m a chemist naturally I love data and I’m also an assessment and accountability guy, so I love data. The thing is data in and of itself is stuff. It’s numbers, it’s stories. When data becomes evidence, it means you’ve applied some level of reasoning to it.

And so we can look at this data, and the reason why I love these awards is because it’s not on a single data point. Our Alexi and Godfrey did this incredible job of thinking this through, and because it became a collection, they applied reasoning to how those things fit together to tell a story of affordability, of student success.

That becomes evidence that higher ed is worth the expense. It’s worth what people are able to do. Do we have areas that we need to do better? Of course. Do we need to do better with informing students coming outta high school what career options are available to them and which ones are going to make more money?

Of course we do, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have great things going on in higher ed right now.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, absolutely, and that’s, that’s the first key. I tell folks all the time, the biggest reason that the public perception of higher education is not where it was, is cost.

Stephen Pruitt: Absolutely.

Drumm McNaughton: And if we can do something about that, just like what you’re doing, incentivizing institutions to, to keep the cost in line or even decrease them.

[00:35:49] Revising Accreditation Standards

Drumm McNaughton: There’s other things going on though as well, and some of the changes you’ve got going at SACS, you know, workforce issues and for me, the big one, you’re revising your standards. It’s something that has to happen periodically in some, it’s every 10 years. But looking forward in revising standards, what are some of the things you’re, you’re looking at?

Stephen Pruitt: That’s a great question and it’s actually one of the most exciting things that’s going on right now. So we have been one of those institutions and you don’t want to change standards every year because they become jello and the idea of picking—

Drumm McNaughton: You’ll drive your presidents crazy.

Stephen Pruitt: Exactly. It’s eating Jello with a big fork.

If you change it too often. The normal revision time is actually a year away. But I didn’t feel like we had time to waste. So I went ahead and called for a revision of the standards immediately. So that work has begun. We have a committee that’s working that has representation of every level of institution and every type of institution.

Drumm McNaughton: Good.

Stephen Pruitt: And we’re making this a pretty public facing event. Standards can often be seen as insider baseball because not everybody understands them. And then you add accreditation to that and it gets even more insider.

Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm.

Stephen Pruitt: But that’s irrelevant to me. We’ve gotta be transparent with what we’re doing.

I’ve seen people do standards at both the K 12 and higher ed level, that they do it in a dark room and they come out and say, yay, they’re done. What we are doing is we’re working, we started with a giant survey of every single standard. And it took, to fill out the survey, it took people hour and a half, two hours.

because you couldn’t just go in and click yes, no, or relevant, irrelevant. You had an opportunity to comment on every single standard. We’ve taken that, we’ve run it through qualitative analysis software. We’re providing that to the teams. As they do their work, we’re going to come out with a first draft.

And we’re going to post it on the web. And we’re going to invite our institutions to comment, presidents, liaisons, deans, instructors, everybody. But we’re also going to have it on there for the public if they want to make a comment. We’re going to take all that feedback, we’re going to go back, we’re going to do a revision, we’re going to post it a second time.

And the reason that I do that is because I believe you should give everybody a chance to say, I told you last time to do this and you didn’t do it, and here’s why you should have. We’ll take all the feedback that second draft, and then we’ll take it to the board in December of 2026.

Things that we’re looking at to, to really get to the answer of your question, we’re looking at streamlining. We believe that, frankly, we have too many standards. We can reduce the number of standards because we can make it less onerous, but at the same time hold a high level of quality.

I believe in rigor. I don’t believe in rigor mortis.

We want to keep rigor. We don’t want to have so much compliance it becomes rigor mortis. We are looking at how we can in how we need to involve workforce. We actually have a committee that is going to be reviewing the standards that are a workforce committee that’s going to give us feedback.

Now we talk about the contribution to workforce because that’s going to look very different in a community college setting versus an R1.

Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm.

Stephen Pruitt: So one size fits all? I don’t believe that, and I think our institutions don’t believe that. So we want to create a system that allows for us to acknowledge the workforce contribution of each institution.

And I think we have to. But I think it needs to be done in a way appropriate to the mission of that institution. We’re looking at how we can differentiate, which goes along with what I was just talking about, the way it looks in a level one institution that doesn’t provide even a baccalaureate degree compared to the Dukes, Vanderbilts, Auburns, UGAs,

Drumm McNaughton: your AAU institutions.

Stephen Pruitt: Looks very different. So we’re having those conversations. Maybe it’s, we already have a differentiated process for accreditation, but now we’re saying maybe we need to go one more step and actually differentiate by institution level. So we want to have those kind of conversations.

We are having conversations about length of time between accreditation. 10 years may be too long. Right now we have a fifth year and a 10th year. Maybe we need to drop that down to a seven and get rid of the fifth year. So what we are talking about when we’re looking at these standards is not tweaking around the edges and nibbling around the edges of the cookie.

We’re talking about a new cookie that hopefully is more robust but at the same time, more recognition that institutions missions rule the day and that we need to support those institutions missions.

Drumm McNaughton: As long as it doesn’t put on too much weight, that cookie.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes. Yes. But I’m not doing keto or anything like that. because that’s just not even good flavor.

Drumm McNaughton: This has been fascinating. I, you know, so much have enjoyed this conversation. One last question for you before we get to our, our takeaways.

[00:41:25] Regaining Public Trust

Drumm McNaughton: From where you sit, how does higher ed need to change to regain the public trust and public perception?

Stephen Pruitt: It’s a great question. I think that we gotta be more transparent about the contribution to workforce. That it’s not just signing up, taking classes, and getting a piece of paper, walking across stage that it does lead somewhere. And even if, and again, I want to be clear, I’m not saying that you have to eliminate a bunch of programs, but at least students need to have the truth in advertising of this is what this is going to offer you at the end of your program.

I think that you hit the nail on the head earlier, the issue around finances and affordability. It can’t be that we put students in perpetual debt for the rest of their life. Especially those coming from low income families. I think that’s going to be really important. And this one, this may be more Stephen than the rest of the world, those two are common, I think for me I think it’s really important that we are better and more thoughtful around articulating the pathways that get a student from high school through the workforce. In my career, I’ve always talked about the education to workforce system, not the K 12 system, the post-secondary system and workforce system, but the education to workforce system.

So we need to figure out better ways that we counsel students in high school that are in dual enrollment or even just preparing for post-secondary. Even without the Georgetown study, what it does say is you may not need a bachelor’s degree, but basically every career that has any possibility for a lifetime of decent wages is going to require some level of post-secondary activity.

And so figuring out how to best articulate from high school through that workforce. And it can be things as simple as going, okay, when I’m in community college and I’m working toward this certificate or this credential, and we have examples of this, Gwinnett Tech does this, for instance, where they have positioned their advising that they advise each student every semester that not just take these to get to an associate’s degree, but if you take this one before you take this one, you can get this certificate.

Which gives you more financial room, which means you’re taking on less debt. It can be something more elaborate that we start to think differently about how we advise students in that, right now we have a huge deficiency in truck drivers. We know that with Waymo and with what’s with already out in New Mexico, they’re testing tractor trailers without drivers.

So rather than just getting through the CDL license, what if we also help them learn logistics or help them learn business so they could own their own business? What if we had a student that was getting a certificate in advanced manufacturing, if we really help them see that advanced manufacturing also leads to engineering.

So you may decide you want to go onto a four year institution and get your engineering degree. Which brings me to another key point. I think another part of this that gets to the financial part, is if we embrace that idea of the education and workforce system, we’ve got to embrace the idea that credit transfer has got to be more embraced.

And just because you didn’t take it on my campus doesn’t mean it was bad course.

Drumm McNaughton: Right.

Stephen Pruitt: And the outside world really doesn’t see that. They see, the course is called this and it’s called this at your institution, why are they not getting credit? And it’s seen as a money grab whether it is or not. And I get that there are things inside of that may be different. But finding more effective ways to facilitate that credit transfer between institutions is huge.

And I guess the last thing, which people already know this, is we don’t have the traditional age of student anymore. So we’ve got to broaden how we approach higher ed to speak to people who are working full-time jobs and finding ways to help them get into higher education. And I think we’ve made progress on that, but I think we could do more.

I think we, it’s something we could actually really further accentuate.

Drumm McNaughton: Those are, those are great things. What comes to mind for me is something that Gordon Gee told me years ago, you know, right in the onset of COVID, he says, COVID is accelerating needed changes in higher ed by a decade or more. That was five years ago. No, it was actually longer than that. It was, you know, almost six years ago.

Well, what’s the accelerator? Artificial intelligence. That is doing, that’s changing the way we think about these, and frankly, we need more folks who are thinking like you are, that it is, you know, education to the workforce, to the gray hair or, or white hair, in my case. It’s the talent assembly line essentially is what it is.

The higher ed is the institution. But you’ve got all this input output and it doesn’t stop there. Michael Crow to me, has got the right idea. You sell your institution to somebody. Why is it after a graduate degree? That’s it. You’re there to provide lifelong learning for individuals because the jobs that high school students are coming in, and we’re talking trad students at this point, the jobs that these students are coming, you know, are going to college right now, haven’t even been invented.

Stephen Pruitt: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the, maybe a little shout out to my former organization, in 2019 we released a report called Unprepared and Unaware. And what it was, was we did a study of individuals ages 25 to 35 who did not have any level of post-secondary education.

And it was eye-opening. And of course this was before COVID. And again, and you just hit the nail head, artificial intelligence and automation. Because everybody thinks of automation. And there’s this perspective that, oh, technology’s going to kick people outta the workforce. It’s actually the opposite.

It’s going to bring more jobs. The question is, are people ready to take them? And so when you look at it and you see these people that at the time in 2019, they were happy, their families are going on vacations, they’re owning their own homes. But we call it Unprepared and Unaware because when you look at what’s coming down the pike, we saw this incredible percentage of people who didn’t have any type of post-secondary education or specified training.

They were going to be left out of the workforce in the future. And then we followed that up with an economic impact report and basically found that, and this was in the 16 Southern states I know this sounds funny, but it’s SREB, we did include Delaware and Maryland. You can’t get sweet tea in their restaurants, but we love ’em anyway.

But we found that 18 million potential adults would be unemployable by 2030. 18 million unemployable, not unemployed, they we’re talking about people who just simply did not have the capacity to be able to hold the jobs because they didn’t have the training for it. And it was, and again, this was before COVID COVID accelerated that to the nth degree, where we are seeing that happen now, where if people aren’t in some type of higher education program, and again, I’m not here proposing that everybody needs a bachelor’s degree, I think, but I do think everybody needs something after high school if they think that they’re going to have any type of possible career.

And we’re seeing more and more states put together what I call the three H list, high need, high skill, high wage career lists. Where they’re prioritizing funding that if you go after certain of these degrees to fill those needs, you might get a little extra of your school paid for. But imagine the economy of the south and subsequently the country, if people completely say high school diploma is fine, it just can’t work.

Drumm McNaughton: Not going to work. Yes. There are certain skills that you learn. I remember that old adage hearing years ago, you go and get a bachelor’s degree to train your mind. You go for a master’s degree to get skills. And you go for a PhD to bring new knowledge into being. It still basically boils down to that.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes.

Drumm McNaughton: Yes.

Stephen Pruitt: Yes.

Drumm McNaughton: This has been a fascinating conversation for me, Stephen and I really appreciate your taking time to go on this show.

Stephen Pruitt: Oh, I’ve loved it. This has been great.

Drumm McNaughton: Well thank you.

[00:51:07] Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, are two final questions, three takeaways for university presidents and boards, what I need to be aware of with the new SACS and with accreditation.

Stephen Pruitt: Welcome to the new SACS, is what I’ve been saying to everybody. So what they need to take away is we are not just changing, we’re changing rapidly. I’ve charged our staff to be and to become the accreditor who’s never existed. So we are going to push the envelope. I shared this with our membership at our annual meeting. There’s an old poem by Robert Frost that says the most difficult thing to do is to stay gold. SACSCOC was seen as the gold standard for a long time, but to stay gold, it means you have to work at it. So we’re going to be bold and stay gold. So that’s one takeaway.

A second takeaway is that there are no silver bullets. Silver bullets are just good for werewolves. That means that we’re all going to have to take, we’re going to have to work hard, and we’re going to have to do a lot to make sure that people understand the value and the importance of education. And I guess the other part of this is, I always like to remind people that education is complex.

It’s not easy. It’s not rock, it’s not rocket science, because rocket science is easier. We can predict what happens with hydrogen and oxygen, but we can’t predict what happens with people. So because it’s that way, education really is a big mosaic. If you think about it in art terms, it’s a mosaic.

And the question is how close are you standing? So are you able to step back from that mosaic and see the bigger picture and how you can help the general populace see the importance and complexity of higher education. That, to me, is a role that we all have to embrace.

Drumm McNaughton: Very, very good. I’m going to, I’m going to borrow the mosaic. Thank you.

Stephen Pruitt: Feel free.

Drumm McNaughton: What’s next for you?

Stephen Pruitt: Oh goodness. We’re continuing to work away. We have some exciting things coming in the near future and in the distant future. I’ve already mentioned that we are revising our standards next year. We’re retraining every single individual on the new standards. It’s not going to be just a rollover. It’s a cold hard stop. Because the standards are going to be different enough that we’ve got to really refocus and retrain and hopefully someday me stop writing an article a week on Law or Lore because everybody starts to understand what the law is. We’re going to release a huge, as I mentioned earlier, a huge, incredibly dynamic dashboard in the spring that’s not just going to bring to bear higher ed, but it’s also going to bring elements of the workforce that will give more support to all of our institutions and to the general populace. We’re about to start putting together our legislative advisory council, which is something that I don’t think any other group has really had. It’s where we’re going to be asking sitting legislators and across all of our states that have institutions in them to come and be a part of helping us evaluate our new standards, implement our new standards, and help guide us and then learn what accreditation is about. So I’m really excited about the opportunity to continue to work with our legislators around the south. and beyond the south, because we aren’t just in the South anymore. So keep an eye out on us. There’s a fair chance the next time you see us, we may not look the same.

Drumm McNaughton: Just don’t change the name.

Stephen Pruitt: No promises. What I’ve told all of our folks is nothing is off the table. If it moves or if it accredits, we’re looking at it.

Drumm McNaughton: Good. Well, Stephen, this has been a real pleasure for me. Thank you so much and I wish you all the best going forward.

Stephen Pruitt: Thank you very much. And thank you for having me on and I’ve loved getting to listen to the other ones that you’ve done, so it’s a real honor to get to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, thank you. It’s very kind. Take care my friend.

Stephen Pruitt: Thank you.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Stephen Pruitt. Stephen, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to the next time our paths cross and keep up the great work down there at SACS.

For my audience, for my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. I hope this episode was as informative for you as it was for me, and I look forward to seeing you next week.