Overall Accreditation Decisions

A recommendation to accredit is made when:

• The Inquiry Brief, coupled with the auditors' findings, indicates that the program faculty's claims about the quality principles are fully warranted and justified, or that support for the claims is at least consistent with evidence derived from contemporary research practices.

A recommendation to grant provisional accreditation is made when:

• The Inquiry Brief, coupled with the auditors' findings, indicates that the program faculty's claims about the core aspects of the quality principles are warranted and justified. Provisional accreditation indicates, on the strength of the results, that the program faculty can remedy the weaknesses in the other sections of the Inquiry Brief and become fully accredited within three years.

A recommendation to grant pre-accreditation status is made when:

• The Inquiry Brief, coupled with the auditors' findings, fails to support the program faculty's claims, but there is reason to believe that additional evidence and/or analysis of existing data would indicate the faculty's claims about the quality principles were warranted, or in the case of new or substantially revised programs, the evidence is forthcoming. Pre-accreditation status indicates that the program, on the strength of several positive indicators, would be able to provide the evidence required for accreditation within a five-year period.

A recommendation to deny accreditation is made when:

• The Inquiry Brief, coupled with the auditors' findings, fails to support the program faculty's claims, and there is little likelihood that additional evidence and analysis would indicate the faculty's claims about the quality principles could be warranted. A denied decision typically indicates that the evidence for a quality control system is too weak and that there is little indication that the program faculty has been able to react productively at this time to the weaknesses uncovered elsewhere in the Inquiry Brief. The accreditation decision, must be denied in this case, and simply awaits the formulation of a remedy for these other weaknesses.