Since Ball State's last 10-year accreditation was in 2004, the university is preparing for the upcoming renewal in October.
John Hausaman, process administrator of public information at the Higher Learning Commission, said the university, which has been accredited since 1925, is in good standing.
Associate Provost Marilyn Buck said students should care about accreditation because it affects their professional lives.
“Your degree and the quality of your degree depends on the fact that you’re graduating from an accredited institution,” she said. “Graduate schools won’t recognize the degree unless it’s from a regionally-accredited institution. Some employers won’t recognize the degree unless it’s from an accredited institution.”
Accreditation can be broken down into several steps.
Committees were formed in May 2011 to begin the self-study report, led by co-chairs Buck and Michael Maggiotto, dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities. The committees analyze the five criteria the HLC judge the university on and provide evidence of the university’s commitment and progress on the criteria.
A self-study report was written, which outlines exactly what the committees found and was sent to the HLC in August.
Bill Knight, the assistant provost for institutional effectiveness and a member of the committee, said they had slight trouble writing the study because the HLC was doing a scheduled revision of their criteria at the same time.
“We started work not knowing what we were writing to,” he said.
Buck said the HLC revisions were not drastic enough to cause much trouble.
“It was more a matter of having to rearrange things,” she said. “It did mean some rewriting, of which we were aware.”
