Accreditation Is in the Air (And We Will Be Too!)
Spring is here! And with it comes two things: crippling seasonal allergies and academic conference season.
If you work in higher education, your inbox has probably been filling up with session previews, hotel block reminders, and the particular brand of professional excitement that only comes from being around a few hundred people who are just as interested in accreditation standards as you. It's kind of like the Higher Ed Compliance’s Comic-Con. And we are not ashamed of that.
Accreditation is genuinely in the air right now, and not just because it's conference or AIM Negotiated Rulemaking season. Conversations about federal oversight, institutional accountability, and the future of accreditation itself are happening at every level: in policy circles, in boardrooms, in the comment sections of higher ed publications, and in a lot of group texts between administrators (we assume).
This week, EduCred Services is heading to Washington, D.C., and we are proud to be attending as the Diamond Sponsor of the Centennial Gala and 100th Annual Conference. The institutions we have had the opportunity to work with over the years, many of them members of the DEAC community, have shaped how we think about this work. They've trusted us with their most complicated challenges, let us into their processes, and pushed us to be better consultants. Sponsoring this milestone is, for us, a small way of saying thank you—to DEAC for a century of championing quality in distance education, and to the community of institutions that have made this work meaningful.
But we’re not coming all the way to DC just to raise a glass (although we will be doing that too). Both Susan and Emily are presenting this year, and we'd love to see you in the room (there will be prizes).
Susan’s Session: Consultants, Contracts, and Caution Tape
Monday, April 20 | 10:45–11:30 AM | Grand Ballroom
Institutional leaders turn to consultants for support on some of their most mission-critical work accreditation, strategic planning, compliance, and organizational change. Done well, those engagements add real expertise, fresh perspective, and capacity that internal teams don't always have. Done poorly, they drain resources and leave institutions no better prepared than when they started.
One of the biggest challenges in the consultant relationship is that institutions often don't know what they don't know: how standards are actually interpreted, what site visitors are really looking for, where the true risks are hiding, and, critically, what cannot be outsourced no matter how good your consultant is.
Susan will spend the first 15 minutes laying out the real strategic benefits and common pitfalls of consultant engagements, candidly and without the sales pitch. Then she hands the floor to the room for open Q&A. Accreditation visit looming? Strategic plan gathering dust? Not sure what evidence you actually need or whether you're even asking the right questions? Bring it. Susan doesn't traffic in vague reassurances. Come with tough questions. Leave with clarity.
Emily’s Session: All Hands on Deck: Strategic Planning Tools for Smooth Sailing
Tuesday, April 21 | 11:45 AM–12:30 PM | Phillips
Strategic planning shouldn't feel like walking the plank, but for a lot of institutions, it does. Not because the tools don't work, but because PESTLE, SWOT, and the 4Ps are almost always treated as three separate exercises when they actually function as a connected system. Used together, they don't just surface insights—they point toward strategic priorities that practically chart themselves.
In this hands-on session, Emily will walk attendees through all three frameworks in real time using a fictional, pirate-themed institution (yes, really), so you can see exactly how each tool builds on the last. You'll leave with a replicable process you can bring back to your own team, plus facilitation tips for leading the conversation without losing the room. Emily has presented at DEAC before, previously featuring dinosaurs, astronauts, and other quirky characters, and is genuinely thrilled to add pirates to the lineup. Talking parrot: optional. Actionable strategy: not.
Come Find Us
If you're registered for the conference (or, even just crashing it – just kidding, please don’t do that), come say hi! Stop us in the hallway between sessions. Grab a seat in the Grand Ballroom or the Phillips room for our sessions. Find us at the Gala. We love this community, and we love the conversations that only happen when people who genuinely care about the future of higher education get in the same room together, especially during a week like this one, when there's so much worth talking about.
A hundred years of distance education accreditation is a milestone. We'll see you there.