Accreditation FAQs

Yes, by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). We are on the Open Pathway and undergo a review and site visit every 10 years. The Higher Learning Commission is one of six regional accreditors recognized by the US Department of Education (USDE) and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). KSU’s current accreditation status is on the HLC webpage.

The Higher Learning Commission, like all CHEA-recognized accreditors, asks us to write a self-study to provide evidence of the work we are doing to meet their accreditation criteria. Then, a group of evaluators review the materials and visit the campus. While on campus, the evaluators interview institutional stakeholders to corroborate the report and ask additional questions as needed. The five criteria, briefly, are 1) Mission (a clear and publicly articulated mission that drives the institution’s work), 2) Integrity (the institution acts ethically and responsibly in its dealings with stakeholders), 3) Teaching and Learning (educational quality and rigor, sufficiency and qualifications of faculty and staff, and supporting evidence of student learning), 4) Quality and Improvement (assessment, evaluation, and continuous improvement of educational programs, student outcomes, and co-curricular experiences), and 5) Institutional Effectiveness (strategic direction, use of resources to achieve specific goals, sufficiency of financial resources). We undergo a full review process on the Open Pathway every 10 years, but many reports are submitted in the period between visits from the accreditor. For more, visit the HLC policies and components webpage.

For our students to be eligible for federal financial aid (e.g., Pell grants, subsidized and unsubsidized loans, PLUS loans), we have to be accredited.  This requirement has been in place since the Higher Education Act of 1965.  If KSU is not accredited, students cannot use federal dollars to attend our institution, even if they are loans that would be paid back.  The State of Ohio, via the Ohio Department of Higher Education, requires that we maintain regional accreditation, and KSU is located in the Higher Learning Commission’s region. For more information, refer to the Guidelines & Procedures for Academic Program Review published by ODHE.

There is no accreditor for a college within a university, but the college is covered by the accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission. HLC reviews the institution as a whole, but it would be inaccurate to say the college itself holds accreditation because the decision is not rendered at that level. However, many programs within the College of EHHS are accredited by discipline-specific accreditors. This type of accreditor focuses on reviewing one or two disciplines. For example, the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND) is the accrediting body for Nutrition programs. The accredited programs in the College of EHHS (along with the accrediting body) are listed on our Professionally Accredited Programs page.

Disciplinary accreditation is not available for all disciplines/program areas. If accreditation is available, it may be optional or mandatory depending on the discipline. For programs in which a license is granted, there is usually a mandated accreditor (e.g., Counseling, Teacher Licensure, Nutrition, School Psychology). For these programs, the state requires that a program hold accreditation for students to be eligible for licensure once they complete the program. Then there are the optional accreditors. For example, our Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management has held accreditation from the Council of Accreditation for Parks, Recreation, Tourism, and Related Professions (CoAPRT) for many years simply because they wanted to pursue that as an indication of program quality. Similarly, our Hospitality Management program has sought and maintained accreditation from the Accreditation Commission for Programs in Hospitality Administration. This is not something they were mandated to do, but the faculty felt it was an important process to undertake. EHHS also has programs that have not sought available accreditation, and this is absolutely fine. There are many reasons to not pursue accreditation if it is optional. Sometimes the accreditor's standards do not align with the program's goals; other times the accreditors do not hold recognition from CHEA (essentially the accreditor of accreditors); and in other cases, the accreditation process would be prohibitively expensive. Sometimes it is a combination of different reasons. The important thing to understand is that, accredited or not, every program at Kent State is asked to collect data annually to evaluate how well students are doing and to make continuous improvements to benefit students.

Many of our teacher education programs have carried a collective accreditation by NCATE/CAEP since 1957. This organization reviews the programs within its scope as a whole and renders an accreditation decision for all programs as a collection. They review initial teacher licensure programs (first teacher license) and advanced licensure programs (second teaching license or other school personnel licenses such as principal). We are accredited by CAEP through May 2030 based on a submitted report and site visit that occurred in the fall of 2022. CAEP reviews programs on seven standards (content and pedagogical knowledge; clinical partnerships and practice; candidate recruitment, progression, and support; program impact; quality assurance system and continuous improvement; fiscal and administrative capacity; and record of compliance with Title IV). The Ohio Department of Higher Education requires that Kent State maintain accreditation, as detailed in the ODHE Guidelines & Procedures for Academic Program Review.

Each teacher licensure program is reviewed by the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) to ensure that it meets both Ohio’s standards and the standards of the disciplinary area (e.g., early childhood, middle childhood, special education). ODHE is not an accreditor. When they render a decision on a program it is considered an approval. Every program is reviewed, and if they meet the standards they are approved. We then report the approvals to the larger accrediting body, CAEP. So it would be incorrect to say an individual teacher licensure program is accredited, as they are approved by ODHE, which is not an accreditor. However, those decisions from ODHE, rendered once every seven years, are very important to our accreditor in determining the quality of the individual licensure programs that make up our larger educator preparation unit. As previously mentioned, the accreditor does not review individual programs, but rather the group of all teacher licensure programs as a whole.

Note: Some teacher licensure programs have the option of filing for additional recognition by a specialized professional association that is aligned with their specific area; for example, the specialized professional association for Integrated Language Arts (7-12) is the National Council of Teachers of English.  This type of recognition is not equivalent to accreditation but is a strong indicator of program quality. We share this report with our accreditor as evidence of quality. At this time, many of our teacher licensure programs do not have a specialized professional association available to submit a recognition report, so they cannot achieve this type of recognition (through no fault of their own).