About NECHE Accreditation
What is NECHE?
In the United States, accreditation is the primary process for assuring and improving the quality of higher education institutions. Regional accreditation traces its roots to 1885. Today, the accreditation of nearly 3,000 colleges and universities is carried out through a process known as ‘institutional accreditation’ (formerly ‘regional accreditation’). Accreditors oversee the quality of institutions of all kinds, ensuring that institutions meet quality standards in order to be eligible to receive federal financial aid funds.
New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) is a non-profit, non-governmental membership organization. Members include a wide variety of higher education institutions, each with its own unique mission. In applying the Standards for Accreditation, the Commission assesses the effectiveness of the institution as a whole.
Member institutions comply voluntarily with the Standards, and evaluation is performed by peers. The Commission’s goal is to promote institutional improvement and public assurance of quality.
What is a Self-Study and why do we do it?
Because accreditation is a process of self-regulation, it requires that institutions engage periodically in a comprehensive and candid self-study of their own strengths and weaknesses. Self-study is at the heart of accreditation, serving both quality assurance and institutional improvement through rigorous self-analysis. It also provides a basis for the Commission’s evaluation in accordance with its?Standards for Accreditation.
Champlain College is undergoing its ten-year comprehensive evaluation for accreditation. There are three parts to the evaluation: (1) self-study, which will commence in early 2025 and be completed in April 2026, (2) on-site evaluation by a trained group of peers, conducted in October 2026, and (3) review and decision by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), our regional accreditor, completed in early 2027.
The institutional self-study is both a product and a process. The product is a 100-page report that addresses the Standards for Accreditation and presents a clear, concise, accurate picture of the institution as a dynamic entity with a sense of its history, an understanding of its present, and a vision of its future. Each standard will have its own chapter in the self-study report that the College will submit to the Commission. Each chapter will be composed based on a three-part framework: Description, Appraisal, and Projection, with underlying themes of institutional effectiveness and student success.
Self-study is also an intensive process that demonstrates the institution’s capacity for reflecting candidly on its strengths and weaknesses and using that analysis for improvement. Our job is to complete the self-study, in which we evaluate how well Champlain College meets the NECHE Standards and make realistic, specific projections for improvement.