PRIVATE SCHOOLS & QUIET POWER undergrad
This independent school accreditation agency oversees many private schools in Florida
What is SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools)?
This committee, rather than the dean, typically controls tenure decisions.
What is the faculty tenure committee?
Accreditation agencies derive legitimacy primarily from this sociological mechanism.
What is normative isomorphism?
This form of power, not formal authority, most influences faculty governance.
What is reputational capital?
Accreditation agencies maintain authority despite lacking coercive power through this Weberian mechanism.
What is rational-legal legitimacy?
Peer review rests on this philosophical assumption about knowledge production.
What is intersubjectivity?
In accreditation reviews, this document is informally known as “the school’s confession.”
What is the self-study?
The “Northwestern bubble” refers to this phenomenon affecting elite academic communities.
What is institutional insularity (or elite isolation)?
A common failure in self-studies is conflating this with actual institutional effectiveness.
What is compliance?
Shared governance breaks down fastest during this institutional condition.
What is financial exigency?
Self-studies function less as evaluation tools and more as this type of organizational artifact.
What is a legitimizing narrative?
Disciplinary boundaries persist because knowledge is socially stabilized through this process.
What is paradigm formation?
A school can lose accreditation without closing if it fails to meet this governance requirement.
What is an independent governing board?
This lesser-known academic ranking system is quietly monitored by administrators.
What is QS World University Rankings?
This theory explains why schools mimic peer institutions even when outcomes don’t improve.
What is institutional isomorphism?
The dean’s authority is strongest in this domain.
What is budget allocation?
Institutions resist outcome-based assessment because it threatens this professional claim.
What is epistemic authority?
The replication crisis challenges this Enlightenment-era assumption.
What is scientific objectivity?
This phrase describes the tension between mission-driven education and tuition reliance.
What is mission drift?
The most common reason faculty senate motions fail.
What is lack of quorum?
In accreditation language, “mission drift” most often results from this financial pressure.
What is tuition dependence?
This phenomenon explains why innovative programs are often housed outside traditional departments.
What is structural decoupling?
Mission drift accelerates when institutions experience decoupling between these two domains.
What are stated values and operational incentives?
Qualitative research defends rigor primarily through this criterion.
What is trustworthiness?
The most common accreditation citation for humanities departments involves insufficient assessment of this skill.
What is critical thinking (or writing proficiency)?
This unofficial term describes a professor who publishes constantly but avoids service and teaching.
What is a “research-only” faculty member (or publishing ghost)?
The most difficult accreditation standard to operationalize involves measuring this construct.
What is student learning outcomes?
Faculty resistance to assessment initiatives is best explained by this theoretical lens.
What is professional autonomy theory?
Accreditation reproduces inequality by privileging institutions that already possess this resource.
What is organizational slack?
The hierarchy of evidence in academia is itself an expression of this epistemological stance.
What is positivism?