Skyline College is currently undergoing the process of renewing its accreditation. What is accreditation?

It is something that all colleges go through; if they want to assure the public and other schools that the college in question is performing to a certain level of standards in education and efficiency in keeping the school open that is accepted nationwide.

Skylines accreditation process takes place once every six years and, takes around one year of planning and self-evaluations that is worked on by Skyline’s faculty, staff and students.

Then sometime around the middle of the process; a team of officials from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) comes to evaluate Skyline to make sure the school meets the standards that are currently in place.

Why is this important to Skyline students? If the college you choose to attend is not accredited by some type of legitimate organization or loses its accreditation, any degree you attain from the school while is not accredited is pretty much worthless.

Most institutions will not accept degrees or transfers from an unaccredited school unless the school is special in some way or another.

As a cautionary tale, our neighbor City College of San Francisco (CCSF) has run into some problems during the renewal of their accreditation. During their last renewal, they were asked to fix some major problems, but the problems were not taken care of so ACCJC has put CCSF on “Show Cause” status.

What “Show Cause” status means is that CCSF has either failed to implement or has not met the requirements to keep its accreditation.

Now it has to demonstrate why the ACCJC should not take away the schools accreditation. If these requirements are not met, then CCSF will lose its accreditation and without its accreditation the school will lose its funding and will have to eventually close down.

While as of now Skyline is not in any trouble, the community can definitely help keep it that way. One way students can help keep the campus out of hot water is to keep informed about Skyline. For example, learning our school’s mission, vision, and value statements would help when those accreditation officials come down to our school and start asking students questions.

Show the staff your support; they do a crazy amount of things to keep this campus afloat especially during accreditation time, including insane amounts of writing.

One of the best options to help Skyline look good for accreditation is to be an active member in the Skyline community; there are plenty of clubs, groups, jobs, and volunteering opportunities at Skyline College that improve our school in some way. It’s just a matter of which one would suit you best.