Institutional Effectiveness New Directions for Community Colleges, Number 153

Institutional effectiveness lies at the heart of accreditation and accountability, as regional accrediting agencies, state legislatures, and even the federal government have increasingly asked colleges to demonstrate effectiveness in all aspects of their operations. Despite the attention that both external agencies and community colleges pay to institutional effectiveness, little has been written about it in the literature of education. This issue of New Directions for Community Colleges helps correct this lack of attention by exploring a number of aspects of institutional effectiveness as it is practiced in the American community college. Institutional effectiveness is not only defined, and its origins and history traced, but the process as it has evolved in community colleges is described in terms useful to community college practitioners. A number of other topics are also explored: