m of Accountability
Meeting the Information Needs of Constituents
BY LORI E. VARLOTTA
If you conduct an Internet search on “higher education accountability,” more than three million
matches will appear. As this search indicates, the calls for higher education accountability have
increased, particularly within the last decade, in both number and intensity. From prospective
student and parent inquiries to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ interaction with the
regional accrediting agencies to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, constituents are looking
for colleges and universities to answer those calls.
In 2006, the National Association of State Universities
and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and the American
Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)
launched an initiative to co-develop a voluntary system of
accountability (VSA) that would allow prospective students,
their families, and interested legislators to compare public
institutions in terms of student demographics, student
success rates, costs, financial aid options, descriptions of
campus life, student experiences and perceptions, and
student learning outcomes. In the last two years, approximately 82 university leaders from 70 public universities
throughout the country worked together to create such a
system. Their work culminated in a five-page web report
titled “The VSA College Portrait,” which rolled out officially in February 2008.
Shortly after the unveiling, detailed information about the
VSA College Portrait started to circulate among university presidents, provosts, and institutional researchers at annual meetings held by NASULGC, AASCU, and AIR (Association of
Institutional Research). This spring, at its 2009 Annual Conference, NASPA will conduct a four-hour VSA workshop geared to
student affairs professionals as a pre-conference offering. In the
meantime, this article provides senior student affairs officers
(SSAOs) and members of their leadership teams with answers
to three increasingly common questions: What is the College
Portrait? Why should I care about it? How do I participate?
