§ 602.19 Monitoring and reevaluation of accredited institutions and programs.

(a) The agency must reevaluate, at regularly established intervals, the institutions or programs it has accredited or preaccredited.

(b) The agency must demonstrate it has, and effectively applies, monitoring and evaluation approaches that enable the agency to identify problems with an institution's or program's continued compliance with agency standards and that take into account institutional or program strengths and stability. These approaches must include periodic reports, and collection and analysis of key data and indicators, identified by the agency, including, but not limited to, fiscal information and measures of student achievement, consistent with the provisions of § 602.16(g). This provision does not require institutions or programs to provide annual reports on each specific accreditation criterion.

(c) Each agency must monitor overall growth of the institutions or programs it accredits and, at least annually, collect head-count enrollment data from those institutions or programs.

(d) Institutional accrediting agencies must monitor the growth of programs at institutions experiencing significant enrollment growth, as reasonably defined by the agency.

(e) Any agency that has notified the Secretary of a change in its scope in accordance with § 602.27(a) must monitor the headcount enrollment of each institution it has accredited that offers distance education or correspondence courses. The Secretary will require a review, at the next meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, of any change in scope undertaken by an agency if the enrollment of an institution that offers distance education or correspondence courses that is accredited by such agency increases by 50 percent or more within any one institutional fiscal year. If any such institution has experienced an increase in head-count enrollment of 50 percent or more within one institutional fiscal year, the agency must report that information to the Secretary within 30 days of acquiring such data.

[84 FR 58921, Nov. 1, 2019]