Academic Quality Improvement Program

History

The Academic Quality Improvement Program (then the Academic Quality Improvement Project, and hereinafter AQIP) was developed beginning in 1999 by Dr. Stephen Spangehl, a Vice President of Accreditation Relations at the Higher Learning Commission (then the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools). The project was funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The project was inspired by Dr. Spangehl's experience as an examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and sought to apply the principles of Total Quality Management to higher education.

AQIP originally focused on 9 categories of activity that lent themselves to self-assessment and continuous improvement, improved and refined in 2008. The guidelines identified ten core principles—Focus, Involvement, Leadership, Learning, People, Collaboration, Agility, Foresight, Information, and Integrity—that high performing organizations use to guide their operations, and required institutions to develop their own projects to apply those principles tho their own activity and measure their success.

The program took a collaborative approach with "Strategy Forums" where groups of institutions shared their insights about the "Action Projects" they undertook to address various challenges. The records of Action Projects were stored in an online network that other participants could access and use as guidance for future improvements. At the end of the review cycle institutions were responsible for preparing a "Systems Portfolio" that required them to answer specific question about processes, results, and improvements for each of the 9 AQIP categories.

Modern Form

AQIP is now known as the AQIP Pathway, and is one of three options that institutions accredited by the Higher Learning Commission can pursue for reaccreditation. The current director of the program is Dr. Linnea Stenson.

An institution must be eligible to choose a pathway in order to elect participation in AQIP. Institutions must be accredited for ten years before they can select an optional pathway, and numerous factors can make an institution ineligible, including recent change in control, substantive change, sanction, monitoring, or if the accreditor has serious concerns about the institution's conduct or commitment to required accreditation activities.

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