Should we be worried that CIM may lose its accreditation due to investigation by the commission?

College Majors Music Major
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Should we be worried that CIM may lose its accreditation due to investigation by the commission?

Was a little speechless when I read the article… but can’t say that I’m that surprised… but still. :frowning:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20150823/NEWS/308239997/higher-learning-commission-notes-concerns-about-cim

PDF of letter from commission to president of CIM:
6 pages long
https://www.hlcommission.org/download/_ActionLetters/Cleveland%20Institute%20of%20Music%20Action%20Letter%207-8-15.pdf

PDF of public notice:
https://www.hlcommission.org/download/_PublicDisclosureNotices/Cleveland%20Institute%20of%20Music%20PDN.pdf

The bottom of the letter said:

“Students, parents, and others from the general public with questions regarding HLC’s work should contact
John Hausaman at the Higher Learning Commission by email at info (at) hlcommission.org or by phone at 312-
263-####”

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It sounds to me like someone blew off the commission review - failed to provide written or adequate information perhaps. If all the cited items were truly failing the students or faculty, I would expect that faculty turn-over would be rampant, ability to recruit new world reknown faculty non-existent, student departure levels high and enrollment numbers or quality of enrolled students down. I’m not aware that any of these are present at CIM.

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It doesn’t go into details, but from reading the article and the PDF’s, what the accrediting commission is worried about is process related. This is the equivalent to when departments are audited in corporations, and the auditors find things that they feel violate corporate standards, and are looking for the university in this case to address the issues and how they plan on correcting it.

Basically, what they are saying is not that CIM offers a bad education, but rather than the processes they have don’t allow for change or for improving what they have.

-They don’t feel their is a review process for the people managing the place, in terms of how they communicate, how they set a vision for the future, how they review academic standards

-Lack of standards for academic achievement across the degree programs and set evaluation standards for faculty,teachers and curricula

-Issues with how they are handling finances, specifically in lack of endowment backing scholarships and such (basically, they are saying that Cleveland offers a lot of financial aid, but doesn’t seem to have the financial plan to pay for it. Usually, that means they may be drawing down from the endowment to pay for scholarships and aid, and not getting it from return on endowment).

-Not reviewing standards on a regular basis and reviewing them vis a vis what is required to educate the students, what is required going forward.

It was careful to say that they didn’t think CIM was necessarily out of compliance or was otherwise not educating students properly, it is basically pointing out process and administrative issues that could cause the school to fall out of compliance.

I suspect there are some other issues here, there were some problems with faculty/student interactions that are pretty well known that I suspect might be behind some of this as well.

They basically have a year to address these issues to show they are in compliance, then the auditors from the sanctioning body will revisit the school and see if they have addressed the issues. To be honest, I suspect unless Smirnoff and the board are complete idiots, they will address this, while conservatories are a bit different than standard colleges, that accreditation could hurt them (people already think conservatories are academically lightweight, as false as that is).

Is it something to be concerned about? I would be more worried about whether the school is a fit for the student, whether there is a teacher that can drive him/her forward, and so forth, while this obviously could be a concern if for example CIM was in deep financial trouble, from reading the report it sounds more like this is more a criticism of the way things are done at the school rather than of the school’s education and such.

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Calm down. This is not an “investigation” nor would this review have been triggered by “some problems with faculty/student interactions”. Accreditation bodies such as the North Central Conference Association (CIM’s regional accreditor under the Higher Learning Commission) conduct regular reviews of the colleges and universities under their accreditation banner, all scheduled well in advance with review dates known to all parties. These reviews can be extremely labor intensive for the schools’ personnel - documentation, conversation, accommodating the needs and requests of the evaluators, etc. As I noted above, I suspect someone should have taken the process a bit more seriously.

Musicprnt, Is it really helpful to anyone to refer to “issues” or rumors that you can’t/won’t document?

I (and many others on this board) can point to many properly accredited schools that we wouldn’t consider sending our kids to.

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“Calm down”? Is anyone seeming to be upset about this? :wink: Anyway, what Musicprnt refers to is fairly well-known, but that does not preclude one getting a great education at CIM.

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I have also personally heard from very recent graduates and large donors about more serious “issues” at CIM. (some included in the HLC’s findings, as well as other management issues)

I sincerely hope the people currently in charge of CIM take these things more seriously. A great institution with an outstanding history like CIM deserves better than this. Many, many years ago when I visited CIM during audition days, I met several perspectives student who have flown over the Atlantic or the Pacific just to audition at the school. That really impressed me.

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StringMama, DD graduated with her MM this past spring and would agree. She adored her professor, made great technical progress that was noticed by those outside of CIM, and benefited greatly from her performance experience. But there were some issues in the rest of the program that needed to be addressed. Hopefullly this is their wakeup call and those can be addressed now before they become major issues.

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Singersmom07,

I’m a newbie here. Who is DD?

I also have family member who graduated from CIM. Something just occurred to me… let’s say the worst happens and CIM goes out of business. How will that affect people who have already graduated? I know this is highly unlikely, but I’m just wondering. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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DD is Darling or Dear Daughter. Nothing to happens to past degrees. They are still degrees. The training is stil there. so all the benefits don’t go away.

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Maybe Case Western will expand their relationship with CIM and acquire the school.

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Speaking of Case Western, I was surprised that CIM diplomas have “Case Western” written on them. :slight_smile:

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“Musicprnt, Is it really helpful to anyone to refer to “issues” or rumors that you can’t/won’t document” I didn’t bring up the specifics because it is publicly available. Part of the issue I am talking about revolved around the administration of the school, that there was a lack of oversight in the situation and the university in court was found liable, as was the person doing it (like I said in my original post, it wouldn’t take much searching to find what I am talking about, it was pretty public). When I read the actual accreditation report, having read more than a few of these kind of reviews, my point was that the specific wording about oversight in one of the main points makes me think that the incident I referred to might have been part of the criticism.

I wasn’t knocking CIM, I was simply trying to explain why/how an accreditation body would do what they did, that’s all. This isn’t a criminal investigation, and basically the threat of removing the accreditation was because the school hadn’t responded in a timely fashion, but they are giving CIM a year to show how they are addressing the issues or answering them, and there are many as I also noted. If anything I said that what people should be concerned about with CIM or any school is if they have teachers and a program that can drive a student forward and not to worry about this. It is more likely than not that CIM will keep the accreditation, and they also can apply to another accreditation organization if they feel this one was unfair.

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The way I read the letter from CIM , they have two years to straighten out whatever. Being half way an education for our daughter there, I’m not worried at all. The powers that be will fix things to come into compliance. Do anyone really think that an institute as formidable as CIM is going to jeopardize its very existence over this? There is a lot of very serious money behind that school and it’s inconceivable that the people that pull the strings are going to let the school lose its accreditation.

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First of all, I doubt losing accreditation would put CIM out of business, Accreditation is a voluntary thing, and if for example CIM for whatever reason lost this, it wouldn’t put the place out of business. It could cause problems, some forms of financial aid are tied to being accredited, for example, and it could deter students from going there (in the music side of things, though, that accreditation will mean little down the road, given that for grad school or in being a musician, prob wouldn’t be noticed). .If they didn’t agree with the organization’s claims or policies, they could join another one.

I suspect what will happen is CIM will put together a task force, and address the issues, and then get re-certified, this kind of crap happens all the time.

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From what I’ve been told the task force has been in place since last year. The problem seems to be not with how or what they’ve been teaching, but with the controls they have been using to monitor themselves, for instance each department has to review itself to show how it’s improving , and those reviews have started this fall. Does anyone really think there is a grad program anywhere that wouldn’t take CIM credits? That’s ridiculous.

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My daughter is applying for music school and has been invited to audition at CIM. This came to our attention when the school sent us a letter notifying us of the change in their accreditation status. Will this cause the faculty to leave? What ‘student/faculty’ interaction issue did others refer to? Should she continue to include CIM on her lists of potential schools?

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There was another thread on here about that, it sounds like the accrediting group had questions about the way CIM was being run, in general it usually revolves around issues of how they manage the finances, plus in things like personnel decisions and such. CIM is not losing accreditation, what basically happened was the accrediting organization put them on notice and the school has to respond with a plan to show how they will address them when the organization comes back again. In most cases like this, the school does not lose accreditation. I don’t remember al the reasons why they ran into trouble, if you search for the old thread there was a discussion about it, but a lot of it was administrative stuff I seem to recall.

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CIM has named Gary Hanson as Interim President as of 1/1/2016. Mr Hanson is the former Executive Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, a position he has held for more than 11 of the 28 years he served with the orchestra. Under his leadership, the CO built its annual residency in Miami, added both opera and ballet to the season in Cleveland and ushered in the nation’s youngest audience for a symphony orchestra. Mr. Hanson is a trained double bass player, having studied music in Canada and Europe.
The Institute couldn’t be in better hands and Mr Hanson will work with both of the Deans to make sure that everything that needs to be done is done correctly and on time. No one need have any concern about applying to CIM based upon this accreditation snafu.

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I know nothing about CIM’s situation but if they were to lose accreditation, I don’t think they’d be able to participate in the Federal Student Loan program.