Best practices for academic program review in large post-secondary institutions: A modified Delphi approach

Accountability in higher education is a focus for accrediting agencies and the Department of Education. There is a call for colleges and universities to evaluate the quality of academic degree programs in an effort to demonstrate transparency and accountability relative to institutional effectiveness, students learning and success, and employment preparation. One way to do this is through the academic program review process. A review of the literature has shown there is no clear consensus in the field, industry, or among experts about the fundamental elements of an academic program review. The purpose of this study was to gain consensus among academic program review experts in an effort to inform best practice for academic program review in post-secondary colleges and universities. A three-round modified Delphi approach was used in the study to elicit input from 21 academic program review experts. The study resulted in four themes broken into six specific recommendations on the purpose of a program review and the best location to house the process to be most effective, 11 recommendations on what to include in an academic program review, three recommendations about how best to use the results, and five recommendations for what success may look like for an academic program review. These 25 recommendations are very specific, which provides a baseline for how colleges and universities may approach the academic program review process. This study lays the foundation for further research on the academic program review process.