Posted on: Friday, February 4, 2005

Community colleges receive 'warning'

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

All but one of the state's seven community colleges have been placed on warning status by their accrediting agency because they lack sufficient program review.

Warning status is the mildest form of sanction from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges' Accrediting Commission for Community Colleges and Junior Colleges, and accreditation for all the schools continues. But the commission will re-evaluate the colleges in April to make sure changes are under way.

The only community college that escaped the commission warning was Hawai'i Community College on the Big Island.

Interim University of Hawai'i President David McClain said the system and the colleges are immediately addressing the commission's concerns and all are in a process of reviewing the most and least successful programs on their campuses.

"Our campuses are all planning to do reviews and some are actually doing reviews," McClain said, "but what troubled the commission was the unevenness of those efforts.

"They need to see evidence that when you find a program that's going well, we'll give it more resources, and one that isn't going as well, is given fewer."

The extra toughness with which the commission is doing program review is part of a nationwide accountability movement that began with the No Child Left Behind initiative in K-12 schools, he said.

"Our regional accrediting agencies are stepping up to that," McClain said.

At the same time, McClain said the system leadership is looking at reinstituting a more centralized leadership for the community colleges to ensure evenness throughout that system.

Nothing has been decided, he said, but there are efforts under way to improve the system's coherence.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.