The New England Board of Higher Education: Mission, Governance, and Impact
The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), established in 1955, plays a crucial role in promoting and enhancing higher education opportunities and services for the residents of the six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. NEBHE's mission encompasses a broad spectrum of activities, from facilitating affordable access to higher education to aligning educational programs with the region's evolving workforce needs.
Mission and Purposes
The New England Commission of Higher Education emphasizes that an institution's mission should align with higher education standards, its charter, and operating authority. The mission should guide the institution's activities and serve as a benchmark for assessing its effectiveness.
Defining the Institutional Mission: The institution's mission defines its unique character, addresses societal needs, identifies its target student population, and reflects both its traditions and future aspirations. This mission serves as the foundation for setting priorities, planning for the future, and evaluating the institution's performance. It also provides a framework for evaluating the institution against the Commission’s Standards. The mission statement is formally adopted by the governing board and made available in institutional publications, both printed and digital.
Concrete and Realistic Purposes: The institution's purposes should be concrete and realistic, further defining its educational and other dimensions, including scholarship, research, and public service.
Planning and Evaluation
NEBHE emphasizes the importance of planning and evaluation in achieving an institution's mission and purposes. Institutions undertake planning and evaluation to accomplish and improve the achievement of its mission and purposes. It identifies its planning and evaluation priorities and pursues them effectively. The institution demonstrates its success in strategic, academic, financial, and other resource planning and the evaluation of its educational effectiveness.
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Systematic and Comprehensive Approach: Planning and evaluation should be systematic, comprehensive, broad-based, integrated, and appropriate to the institution. This process involves the participation of individuals and groups responsible for achieving institutional purposes and incorporates external perspectives. Results of planning and evaluation are regularly communicated to appropriate institutional constituencies. The institution allocates sufficient resources for its planning and evaluation efforts.
Institutional Research: Sufficient institutional research is crucial to support planning and evaluation. The institution systematically collects and uses data necessary to support its planning efforts and to enhance institutional effectiveness.
Strategic Planning: Institutions should engage in planning beyond a short-term horizon, including strategic planning that involves realistic analyses of internal and external opportunities and constraints. The results of strategic planning are implemented in all units of the institution through financial, academic, enrollment, and other supporting plans.
Contingency Planning: The institution plans for and responds to financial and other contingencies, establishes feasible priorities, and develops a realistic course of action to achieve identified objectives. Institutional decision-making, particularly the allocation of resources, is consistent with planning priorities. The institution should have a demonstrable record of success in implementing the results of its planning.
Regular Evaluation: The institution regularly and systematically evaluates the achievement of its mission and purposes, the quality of its academic programs, and the effectiveness of its operational and administrative activities, giving primary focus to the realization of its educational objectives. Its system of evaluation is designed to provide valid information to support institutional improvement. The institution’s evaluation efforts are effective for addressing its unique circumstances. These efforts use both quantitative and qualitative methods.
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Academic Program Quality: The institution’s principal evaluation focus is the quality, integrity, and effectiveness of its academic programs. Evaluation endeavors and systematic assessment are demonstrably effective in the improvement of academic offerings, student learning, and the student experience.
Governance and Institutional Effectiveness
A robust system of governance is essential for an institution to effectively achieve its mission and purposes. The institution has a system of governance that facilitates the accomplishment of its mission and purposes and supports institutional effectiveness and integrity. Through its organizational design and governance structure, the institution creates and sustains an environment that encourages teaching, learning, service, scholarship, and where appropriate, research and creative activity. It demonstrates administrative capacity by assuring provision of support adequate for the appropriate functioning of each organizational component. The institution has sufficient autonomy and control of its programs and operations consistent with its mission to be held directly accountable for meeting the Commission’s Standards for Accreditation.
Clear Authority and Responsibilities: The authority, responsibilities, and relationships among the governing board, administration, faculty, staff, and sponsoring entity (if any) are clearly described in the institution’s by-laws, or an equivalent document, and in a table of organization that displays the working order of the institution. The board, administration, staff, faculty, and sponsoring entity understand and fulfill their respective roles as set forth in the institution’s official documents and are provided with the appropriate information to undertake their respective roles.
Organizational Structure and Decision-Making: The institution’s organizational structure, decision-making processes, and policies are clear and consistent with its mission and support institutional effectiveness. The institution’s system of governance involves the participation of all appropriate constituencies and includes regular communication among them.
Governing Board's Role: The governing board is the legally constituted body ultimately responsible for the institution’s quality and integrity. Where the institution’s ownership or affiliation structure or other circumstances or requirements may involve more than one legally constituted body with authority, the institution demonstrates that the governing body with direct responsibility for the institution’s quality and integrity has sufficient autonomy and control to be held accountable for meeting the Commission’s Standards and to ensure that it can act in the institution’s best interest and that the legally constituted bodies with authority have an aligned understanding of their respective roles.
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Board Composition and Responsibilities: The board assures representation of the public interest in its composition and reflects the areas of competence needed to fulfill its responsibilities. Two-thirds or more of the board members, including the chair, are free of any personal or immediate familial financial interest in the institution, including as employee, stockholder or shareholder, corporate director, or contractor. Members of the governing board understand, accept, and fulfill their responsibilities as fiduciaries to act honestly and in good faith in the best interest of the institution toward the achievement of its educational purposes in a manner free from conflicts of interest.
Multi-Campus Systems: In multi-campus systems organized under a single governing board, the division of responsibility and authority between the system office and the institution is clear. Where system and campus boards share governance responsibilities or dimensions of authority, system policies and procedures are clearly defined and equitably administered relative to the mission of the institution.
Board's Understanding of Mission: The board has a clear understanding of the institution’s distinctive mission and exercises the authority to ensure the realization of institutional mission and purposes. The board approves and reviews institutional policies; monitors the institution’s fiscal condition; and approves major new initiatives, assuring that they are compatible with institutional mission and capacity. These policies are developed in consultation with appropriate constituencies. The board assures that the institution periodically reviews its success in fulfilling its mission and serving its students. The Board is effective in helping the institution make strategic decisions and confront unforeseen circumstances. It regularly reviews the institution’s systems of enterprise risk management, external audits, regulatory compliance, internal controls, and contingency management. The board assures appropriate attention is given to succession planning for institutional leadership and, where applicable, the composition of the board itself.
Board Effectiveness: The board systematically develops, ensures, and enhances its own effectiveness through orientation, professional development, effective self-assessment, and regular evaluation including an external perspective. The board addresses its goals for diversity within its membership. Its role and functions are effectively carried out through appropriate committees and meetings. Utilizing the institutional governance structure, the board establishes and maintains appropriate and productive channels of communication among its members and with the institutional community.
Chief Executive Officer: The board appoints and periodically reviews the performance of the chief executive officer whose full-time or major responsibility is to the institution. The board delegates to the chief executive officer and, as appropriate, to others the requisite authority and autonomy to manage the institution compatible with the board’s intentions and the institution’s mission. In exercising its fiduciary responsibility, the governing board assures that senior officers identify, assess, and manage risks and ensure regulatory compliance.
Internal Governance: The chief executive officer, through an appropriate administrative structure, effectively manages the institution so as to fulfill its purposes and objectives and establishes the means to assess the effectiveness of the institution. The chief executive officer manages and allocates resources in keeping with institutional purposes and objectives and assesses the effectiveness of the institution. The chief executive officer assures that the institution employs faculty and staff sufficient in role, number, and qualifications appropriate to the institution’s mission, size, and scope.
Consultation and Responsiveness: In accordance with established institutional mechanisms and procedures, the chief executive officer and senior administrators consult with faculty, students, other administrators, and staff, and are appropriately responsive to their concerns, needs, and initiatives. The institution’s internal governance provides for the appropriate participation of its constituencies, promotes communications, and effectively advances the quality of the institution.
Chief Academic Officer: The institution’s chief academic officer is directly responsible to the chief executive officer, and in concert with the faculty and other academic administrators, is responsible for the quality of the academic program. The institution’s organization and governance structure assure the integrity and quality of academic programming however and wherever offered. Off-campus, continuing education, distance education, correspondence education, international, evening, and weekend programs are clearly integrated and incorporated into the policy formation, academic oversight, and evaluation system of the institution.
Faculty Role: The institution places primary responsibility for the content, quality, and effectiveness of the curriculum with its faculty. Faculty have a substantive voice in matters of educational programs, faculty personnel, and other aspects of institutional policy that relate to their areas of responsibility and expertise.
Student Views: The system of governance makes provisions for consideration of student views and judgments in those matters in which students have a direct and reasonable interest.
Decision-Making: Through its system of board and internal governance, the institution ensures the appropriate consideration of relevant perspectives; decision-making aligned with expertise and responsibility; and timely action on institutional plans, policies, curricular change, and other key considerations.
Contractual Arrangements: The institution using contractual arrangements, consortial or other written agreements involving credits and degrees, the delivery of coursework, the assessment of student achievement, or the recruitment or support of students regularly reviews the effectiveness of such arrangements and negotiates appropriate changes. Consistent with Commission policy, the institution maintains sufficient control over the arrangements to ensure quality in the academic program and services for students and prospective students, including the ability to modify the agreements as needed. Written agreements provide for the termination or phasing out of such arrangements as circumstances warrant, and the institution develops appropriate exit strategies as needed.
Academic Programs
The institution’s academic programs are consistent with and serve to fulfill its mission and purposes. The institution works systematically and effectively to plan, provide, oversee, evaluate, improve, and assure the academic quality and integrity of its academic programs and the credits and degrees awarded. The institution sets a standard of student achievement appropriate to the degree or certificate awarded and develops the systematic means to understand how and what students are learning and to use the evidence obtained to improve the academic program.
Collegiate-Level Programs: The institution offers collegiate-level programs consisting of a curriculum of studies that leads to a degree in a recognized field of study and requires at least one year to complete. The institution for which the associate’s degree is the highest awarded offers at least one program in liberal studies or another area of study widely available at the baccalaureate level of regionally accredited colleges and universities.
Published Learning Goals: The institution publishes the learning goals and requirements for each program. Such goals include the knowledge, intellectual and academic skills, competencies, and methods of inquiry to be acquired. In addition, if relevant to the program, goals include creative abilities and values to be developed and specific career-preparation practices to be mastered.
Coherent Program Design: Programs leading to degrees or other awards have a coherent design and are characterized by appropriate breadth, depth, continuity, sequential progression, and synthesis of learning. Coherence is demonstrated through learning goals, structure, and content; policies and procedures for admission, retention, and completion; instructional methods and procedures; and the nature, quality, and extent of student learning and achievement.
Consistency in Quality: The institution offering multiple academic programs ensures that all programs meet or exceed the basic quality standards of the institution and that there is a reasonable consistency in quality among them. The institution provides sufficient resources to sustain and improve its academic programs.
Assuring Academic Quality: Through its system of academic administration and faculty participation, the institution demonstrates an effective system of academic oversight, assuring the quality of the academic program wherever and however it is offered.
Initiatives and Programs
NEBHE actively promotes various initiatives and programs to enhance higher education in New England.
New England Regional Student Program (RSP): Launched in 1957, the RSP allows students from New England states to enroll in certain out-of-state public institutions at reduced tuition rates if their chosen programs are not offered by their home state's public colleges. The program expanded to include community and technical colleges in 1967, and state colleges in 1972.
High Value Credentials for New England (HVCNE): With support from the Lumina Foundation, NEBHE launched HVCNE in partnership with Credential Engine in 2018. This initiative aims to identify high-value credentials in high-demand sectors, such as biosciences, IT, and healthcare, by publishing credentials to the Credential Registry. This effort promotes credential transparency and helps align postsecondary education with workforce development needs. Through the collaboration between HVCNE and Credential Engine, close to 1,500 unique credentials from New England have been published to the Registry.
NEPEC Accelerator Grants: NEPEC offers Accelerator Grants to support higher education institutions across New England in increasing Pell-eligible prison education programming. These grants support educational pathways that promote meaningful opportunities for growth and reentry success.
Open Education Resources (OER): NEBHE promotes the use of Open Education Resources to improve student access to course materials and enable faculty to customize materials to reflect their students' cultures and experiences.
Key Activities and Partnerships
NEBHE engages in a range of activities and partnerships to achieve its mission:
Convening: NEBHE brings together higher education leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders to discuss and address critical issues facing higher education in New England. Recent discussions have focused on strategies to improve higher education access and affordability and align higher education with the region's workforce needs.
Research: NEBHE conducts research on higher education trends, challenges, and opportunities in New England to inform policy and practice.
Programs: NEBHE develops and implements programs to support students, institutions, and policymakers in achieving their goals.
Credential Transparency: NEBHE, in partnership with Credential Engine and through a grant from the Lumina Foundation, is giving every state in the region a way to identify high-value credentials in high-demand sectors. Through the High Value Credentials for New England (HVCNE) initiative, NEBHE is working with state agencies, systems, and institutions across the region to publish credentials to the Credential Registry so that all New Englanders have information about credentials from secondary and postsecondary institutions, professional education and training providers, and industry associations and employers.
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