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Proposal to add "accreditation" parameter

Accreditation - whether an institution is accredited and by whom - is a critical fact that is not currently matched with a parameter in this template. It could conceivably be added to the "academic affiliation" parameter but there is language in older versions of the documentation for this template that specifically barred that practice. I don't know why that decision was made but even though the language is no longer present it still established the norm that accreditors are not included in the infobox (I have even helped enforce this norm by removing the handful of instances I have seen).

This seems like a critical oversight that is easily remedied. I propose we add an "accreditation" parameter to this infobox with the description "Institution-wide accreditor(s)." The intent is to include only those accreditors that accredit the entire institution and exclude those that only accredit part of the institution. For large or complex U.S. institutions with hundreds of degree programs, there can be a few dozen accreditors who each accredit only some programs (sometimes just one specific program). But in most cases there is only one accreditor that accredits the entire institution; until recently, these were "regional accreditors" and "national accreditors" but a few months ago those categories were collapsed into a single "institutional accreditor" label.

Does this make sense, especially in a non-U.S. context? Does the title of the parameter or the suggested description need to be changed (e.g., the proposed title is "accreditation" but the discussion is almost entirely about "accreditor(s)")? ElKevbo (talk) 23:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Agree. It won't make sense in most non-US contexts, but not all parameters have to be used all the time. Eccekevin (talk) 23:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

• ElKevbo, thanks for the starting this discussion. Could you add the parameter to the sandbox (we need to decide where to put it if we do want it) and give a few examples of what it would look like on different pages? We should particularly flesh out how we'd want it to display for institutions with no accreditation or with some sort of probationary status, as those are likely flashpoints. Also, for those of us not as much in the weeds of accreditation, could you clarify what value listing the accreditation has for readers? Especially for somewhere like Stanford, I could see someone reacting "well duh, of course it's accredited, since it's Stanford. And it seems WASC is the accrediting body for all the California schools, so why do we need to put it infobox when we already list the location?"
  Given that accreditation statements often have a lot of information about an institution's status beyond just a thumbs up/down decision, something else to think about is whether we want to have external links to an institution, either as part of the infobox or in the EL section. I'd say putting it in the EL section might be a good idea. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb – there are also 'national' accreditors in the US besides the 'regional' accreditors such as WASC (I'm putting those in quotes as the distinction has officially been abolished). But just knowing a college is in California doesn't necessarily tell you that WASC is their accreditor.

I'm wonder if "quality assurance" might be a more generic term that could be useful? I forsee editors on the pages of non-US institutions using the "accreditation" label to put in the responsible quality assurance authority.

Linked to this is the issue of accrediting bodies such as Accreditation Service for International Colleges, which mainly accredits non-degree-awarding colleges, many of which run courses leading to degrees validated by universities. This would lead to the situation where the article for the London School of Commerce says (correctly) that it is accredited but, under a strict definition of accreditation, the London School of Economics article would not. Robminchin (talk) 01:42, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I am in favour of including all accreditation parameter, but there are a lot of details that need to be worked through. Robminchin (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Would it perhaps be more clear if it were explicitly labeled "Institutional accreditation?" That might help with some potential confusion (among both readers and editors). We can't address all of the complexities of accreditation for specific programs in the infobox or lede. If there are institutions that are institutionally accredited that also offer programs that should be programmatically accredited (e.g., teacher education, nursing) then that should probably be mentioned in the body. But I think that would be pretty rare; institutional accreditors, state education bodies, and the federal government do not look kindly on institutions that deceive students by offering programs that the institution knows are deficient. (That is usually how students succeed in lawsuits against "predatory" institutions: demonstrate that the institution overpromised, misled, or lied to them and took their money anyway.)

@Sdkb: I'm not sure that I agree with your characterization of accreditation as being either simple to determine from an institution's geographic location or accreditation status being too complex for an infobox. As Rob mentioned, we can't assume that institutions are accredited by their (former) regional accreditor; it's a safe assumption for public institutions and many older private institutions but a lot of private institutions, especially the more specialized ones, are accredited by a (former) national accreditor. Moreover, when the Department of Education collapsed "regional" and "national" accreditation into one category they also explicitly permitted the former regional accreditors to work outside of their historical geographic boundaries (this was positioned as an "anti-trust" issue). A few of those accreditors have already amended their policies/bylaws/standards to allow for institutions anywhere in the country to apply for accreditation. Who knows how widespread that will be and how quickly it will happen but it's a possibility that at some future point the old geographic boundaries will be completely meaningless. (And it's also worth noting that selecting an institution in California is a particularly bad example as it has two former regional accreditors, one for colleges that award certificates and associate degrees and one for colleges and universities that award more advanced degrees. So we'd have to know location and institutional type to make a guess as to a California institution's accreditor. :) )

With respect to complexity, the good news is that institutional accreditation is a binary state: an institution is either accredited or it is not. There are many kinds of warning statuses that an accreditor can place on an institution, most prominently "probation" and "on notice," but even with those statuses the institution remains accredited. Realistically, most institutions remain accredited at least temporarily even when an accreditor formally revokes an institution's accreditation because the next step is to go to court to immediately apply for a temporary injunction forcing the accreditor to continue accrediting the institution while the rest of the lawsuit plays out; given the high and permanent stakes of losing accreditation - closure for most institutions - that motion is almost always granted.

I do think it would be interesting to consider noting those other statuses in the infobox, perhaps as a parenthetical or something similar. I think it's important to note those statues and the underlying causes and I've often added them to the lede of articles whenever I can as that information is critical for readers. But I think that perhaps we should start just with the institutional accreditor(s) in the infobox, something that rarely changes, before we begin to work on adding and removing information that can change much more frequently. In other words, what system(s) would we use to monitor changes in accreditation status? (Reading Inside Higher Ed every day isn't a half-bad system; it's what I typically use but I don't know if their coverage is comprehensive and systematic.) ElKevbo (talk) 02:37, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

ElKevbo, thanks for those explanations. I'm definitely not very familiar with all the details about accreditation, as illustrated with my goof with the California example. But I'm still looking for an answer to the core question: what value does listing the accreditation have for readers? It seems that for most institutions, full accreditation can be assumed, and if it's missing or there are issues, those are discussed in the article in a way that provides context the infobox probably could not. For accredited institutions, what significance does it have that a school was accredited by one association versus another that would be meaningful to readers? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:59, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I suppose the same thing can be said parameters such as "faculty" and "location:" Yes, they're so common that they can be assumed for (legitimate) institutions but nonetheless they're still essential pieces of information. ElKevbo (talk) 03:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

ElKevbo, I don't really follow; the faculty size and location both seem to have clear value for the reader, and while I assume the accreditation has some value, too, I'd be more comfortable giving full support to this if I understood what it was. To phrase the question another way: why is the particular body that accredited an institution an important enough piece of information to warrant inclusion in the infobox? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:00, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

It's critical that we indicate if an institution is accredited and it's trivial to do by simply including the specific institutional accreditor(s) in the infobox. Right now we're only doing this for unaccredited institutions by shoving "unaccredited" into both the type parameter and the lede sentence. This information is certainly much more important than parameters that is already in the infobox e.g., president, chair of the board of trustees (that several editors defended as being critical just a few months ago in a section above), five different parameters focused on athletics (many of which are so ill-defined that no one agrees on how to use them), an excruciatingly vague "symbol" parameter. ElKevbo (talk) 21:42, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there an issue with putting it in the type parameter? Sorry to keep harping on with questions, but the more I think about this, the more I can see why past editors at some point seemingly didn't feel that it should have a parameter. For unaccredited institutions, the information is clearly essential, but for the vast majority where it is not specified in the lead, it can be safely assumed, and adding the specific accreditor seems like it could be infobox bloat. Putting it in the body where context like probationary status can be given, and/or the external links where readers will go to it directly, seem like better options. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:44, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

"Infobox bloat" is far away in the rearview mirror for this template. It's inevitable when many editors believe that it's helpful and appropriate to have one infobox template for every college, university, and postsecondary institution in the world. It's further exacerbated when discussions and edits are so dominated by amateurs (not a knock on the volunteers who spend their time; more of a frustration with my fellow scholars and researchers who remain passionately uninvolved).

I'm skeptical that it would be widely accepted to add this to "External links" section because I think that many editors would object to this as an appropriate link. Additionally, several accreditors don't provide useful URLs that we could use to directly link to their directory entry for a specific institution (sorry for not providing any concrete examples; I know this is the case but I haven't explicitly kept notes on this particular issue). In some cases, we'd have to decide if we're okay linking to one or more pdf documents instead of a webpage(s).

Currently, I see this being handled in a few places in articles. A minority of articles include the institutional accreditor(s) in the lede; in my experience, many of these are lesser known institutions and the accreditation information is a clear attempt to convince readers that the institution is legitimate. In some other cases, the institutional (and often programmatic) accreditor(s) is included in either the "History" or "Academics" section; my recollection is that this is more common in the "Academics" section.

For institutions that are not accredited, many have "unaccredited" prepended to their institutional type in both the infobox and lede sentence. Institutions whose accreditation is currently threatened - currently on probation, currently on show cause status, etc. - often have that indicated in the lede. When I add that information, I also (try to remember to) explicitly note that the institution is still accredited and briefly summarize the major issues that the accreditor has cited for their action(s). One area where we're very inconsistent is what happens to that information when the status(es) is removed; in many cases the information about the challenge is completely removed with no indication that this major challenge ever existed.

If you're totally opposed to including this in the infobox - a position I find perplexing given all of the other parameters already there, especially the many parameters that are rarely used and vaguely defined - then I think it would be best to modify WP:UNIGUIDE to explicitly recommend that:

(a) the institutional accreditor (or lack thereof) be mentioned in the lede,

(b) institutional accreditor and programmatic accreditors (or lack thereof for programs that typically require programmatic accreditation) be discussed in the "Academics" section,

(c) current, formal accreditation statuses (e.g., probation, show cause) and their underlying issue(s) be summarized in the lede and described further in the "Academic" section or "History" section as appropriate, and

(d) previous, formal accreditation challenges (e.g., probation, show cause, removals) and their underlying issue(s) be described in the "Academic" section or "History" section as appropriate.

That doesn't answer the typical Wikipedia questions of "Who will do this work and how will we ensure that it's up-to-date?" but it's a good framework for moving forward. ElKevbo (talk) 19:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

As a non-US editor I'm struggling a little to understand why we need to address accreditation on all articles. In many countries the higher education sector is regulated such that an institution can only be a "university" and use that word in its name if it has degree awarding powers and in turn can only get them if approved by a state run process. The only times accreditation really comes up is for various colleges that don't have the powers in their own right but run a small number of degree programmes that are formally awarded by another institution. But for actual universities it becomes a bit "water is wet". By all means have something for countries where regulation is messy but for many countries it's about as relevant as a university's sports performance. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:33, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

This is one reason why I have objected and continue to object to imposing one infobox template for all colleges and universities in all countries. There is not a "U.S. system" of higher education and institutions are often free to label themselves as they please without seeking approval from any government agency. Accreditation is the key indicator that an institution is (mostly) legitimate and has passed some sort of peer review to meet minimum standards. (There are typically a handful of institutions that are not accredited but are still legitimate; accreditation is often conflated with federal financial aid and all of the policies and laws that come with that but some institutions reject those for political or religious reasons.) ElKevbo (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Accreditation is also used outside of the US by (typically non-university) institutions in the private higher education sector to show their legitimacy, and internationally by institutions that want to demonstrate comparable standards to Western universities. The UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, for example, provides accreditation for international (i.e. non-UK) higher education institutions to show they meet the European standards.[1]] I don't think the proposed parameter is limited to the US in its scope, even if it doesn't apply to the quality assurance systems often used for national HE systems (and, as I said above, I think this needs to be explicitly addressed – many of these bodies are included in the list of recognized higher education accreditation organizations). Robminchin (talk) 06:35, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

So where do we stand on this proposal? I know that someone above asked for this to be tried out in a sandbox so we can see it in action but I want to see if this has a chance of being accepted before doing that (unless someone is sitting on the fence and needs to see it in action before making a decision). It sounds like there is skepticism that would be useful for all countries but that doesn't seem like a reasonable objection as long as the parameter is optional (which is certainly the proposal I am making with the likely exception of institutions in the U.S.). There may be lingering questions about (a) whether a new parameter is needed or if this information can be added to an existing parameter ("type" has been mentioned and "affiliations" and "academic affiliations" are also possible options) and (b) whether "Accreditation" is the best title or if it needs to be something more generic like "Quality assurance". (For the record, I am strongly opposed to "Quality assurance" or anything similar; it's original terminology made up by Wikipedia editors and thus unrecognized by others, at least in the U.S.)

Is implementing this in a sandbox and then creating a few different examples the most appropriate next step? ElKevbo (talk) 00:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Support adding the parameter. Whether a institution is accredited would certainly qualify as "key information" in places where that cannot be assumed or is otherwise not obvious. Looking at project-wide practice, there are many infoboxes with parameters that are only used in a minority of their tranclusions; project consensus is to have fewer, more generic infoboxes, even if that means some parameters are used in only a small subset or certain geographical area. MB 02:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

"Quality assurance" is used by organisations such as the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education, which includes all of the major US accreditors, and accreditation is included as a system of quality assurance in the literature, e.g. [2] where it is defined as "Quality assurance is an all-embracing term covering all the policies, processes and actions through which the quality of higher education is maintained and developed (Campbell and Rozsnyai, 2002, p. 32". This chapter explicitly includes US accreditation in its definition of quality assurance. It is most certainly not WP:OR. Having said that, if the term is not widely recognised in the US, it might be better to combine both terms in at least the display text of the parameter, e.g. "Institutional accreditation/quality assurance" or something similar. Robminchin (talk) 03:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Why not just add both parameters and let editors use the one that is most appropriate? ElKevbo (talk) 05:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Test copy and cases created

I have created a copy of the template in my sandbox, added the accreditation template, and created a couple of test cases. I placed the new parameter after the "Parent" parameter and before the various "Affiliation" parameters. How does this look? ElKevbo (talk) 18:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

​​​​​ I've pinged editors who have participated in this discussion. ElKevbo (talk) 18:10, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I'm still very much on the fence about this—I can definitely understand why it's as or more significant than some of the parameters that already exist that we seem to agree are bloat, but I'm hesitant about whether the way to deal with infobox bloat is really to just succumb to it rather than to fight it. An infobox is part of the lead of an article, and I'm just not fully persuaded that the accreditation is always going to be due for the lead, especially in the case of elite universities where noting that it's accredited is basically like noting that yes, the 2021 Mercedes S-Class car has powered rather than crank windows. If we did create this parameter, what sort of documentation instructions would we use about when it is vs. isn't appropriate to use? I wouldn't want it to become like the academic affiliations parameter where the de facto default becomes to just list everything no matter how trivial.

I do agree that accreditation information is essential to have somewhere in the article; I think putting it in either the academics or organization section, and recommending that major challenges be noted in the history section, and also recommending that it be an external link if there's a page for it, might be sufficient. I'd also support a line like "institutions that have lost their accreditation should generally have that fact noted in the lead". {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:00, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

It's an optional parameter (that may not make sense in some countries) so maybe that addresses some concerns about bloat. In your car analogy, this is more like telling readers what kind of engine is in the car. Of course every car has some kind of engine and the precise kind or size of engine is not meaningful for many readers (like me!) but those who are experts in cars know that this is essential information. As far as documentation, my draft is: "Institution-wide accreditor(s)." In the U.S., this would be the accreditors that are (now) referred to as "institutional accreditors." I don't know if that's a meaningful distinction outside the U.S. but in the U.S. we distinguish between accreditors that accredit entire institutions and those that only accredit specific programs or groups of programs. In my experience, most U.S. institutions have only one institutional accreditor with a few having none (most common for diploma mills or a handful of institutions with very strong and particular religious or political beliefs) or two accreditors (one a former regional accreditor and one a former national accreditor).

I think we're reigning in the academic affiliations parameters, at least for U.S. institutions. I've removed the organizations that we previously discussed as being unsuitable for this parameter.

I completely agree that accreditation should also be included in the body of the article. I don't think it's helpful to hold that discussion here, however, as it really belongs here. If you are amenable to make this proposal at that Talk page, I'm happy to support it. Similarly with any proposals to specifically note in the lede if an institution is not accredited or is currently under a significant sanction by an institutional accreditor that could lead to the loss of accreditation. ElKevbo (talk) 02:41, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Last call before I request this parameter be added. By my count, four editors (myself, Robminchin, MB, and Eccekevin) support adding this parameter with one editor (Sdkb) uncertain; no other editors have participated in the discussion. ElKevbo (talk) 23:20, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I just read the discussion; it looks like a good idea to me! Tol | Talk | Contribs 23:22, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Request accreditation parameter be added

As demonstrated in the discussion above, there appears to be a consensus to add a new "accreditation" parameter to this template. This has been tested in a copy of the template in my sandbox; that just needs to be copied over this template with the references to my sandbox changed to references to the actual template. Once the new parameter is added, I'll edit the documentation for this template, too (the test copy of the documentation in my sandbox already has the new parameter). Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 15:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Can we please have the new "accreditation" parameter link to Educational accreditation? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 02:57, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Per MOS:SPECIFICLINK, I think higher education accreditation would be the better target. For e.g. U.S. institutions, we might even want to consider higher education accreditation in the United States, although that would require some coding and starts to introduce an EGG (a trade-off that has been previously discussed here). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:38, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done Elli (talk | contribs) 17:42, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

start date or start date and age

At one place the documentation says one should use {{start date}} for the establishment date. On another it says {{start date and age}} should be used. Thoughts? --Muhandes (talk) 14:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Muhandes, good catch. I think we'd really be fine with either, but to standardize our guidance, I think it's nice to have the age, so I lean a little toward that. Do you have any preference? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:13, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

My preference is not to add age. I can tell by looking at the date if the place has been around a few years, decades, or centuries - which is good enough for a quick summary of important facts in the infobox. I find seeing something like "324 year ago" more distracting than useful. MB 00:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

That's persuasive to me, and looking into it the age often causes the parameter to go from one line to two, so I now agree. I'll go ahead and update the documentation (we can always of course change it again if others comment here and the consensus shifts). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion, but if I had to choose I would prefer not to add age. --Muhandes (talk) 06:30, 2 August 2021 (UTC)