The Compared Costs and Benefits of Interagency Cooperation and Separate Accreditation Processes: A Case Study

Using open systems theory as a theoretical framework, this case study examines the costs and benefits of accreditation processes at a public research university. Contextual ingredients (inputs) include leadership philosophy and the analytical nature of the institution as factors potentially influencing the process (throughput) and costs and benefits (outcomes) in the context of the environment. As processes, Middle States Association, Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology, and American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of BusinessInternational Association for Management Education self-studies and site visits are compared under both separate and joint conditions. A comparison of the labor and non-labor resources as costs indicates that the joint effort involved fewer participants, less labor, and lower direct costs than did the separate processes that occurred ten years earlier. These reductions may be only partially due to the use of the joint effort, however, as the reduction may have resulted from two of the contextual ingredients (inputs). These confounding factors include leadership philosophy regarding accreditation and the enhanced analytical nature of the institution since the leadership at the time of the joint review process linked the review to the institutions strategic planning process.