Next few months are critical to Pima Community College's future

Pima Community College’s possible future came into focus this week when its leaders learned new details of what could happen after a crucial visit from the school’s accreditor next month.

Two potential outcomes loom for the school: a dreaded “show cause” order giving PCC one last chance to avoid shutdown or a best-case scenario in which the accreditor lifts its current sanction but puts the school on intensive monitoring for the next few years.

“Show cause means we have a year as an institution to demonstrate to the (accreditor) why they should not pull our accreditation,” Bruce Moses, the college administrator in charge of accreditation issues, told PCC’s Governing Board at a study session this week.

Moses said he and Chancellor Lee Lambert aren’t expecting that to happen, but said it depends to a large degree on what occurs at the college over the next few months.

PCC has been under accreditation sanctions since 2013 for failing to meet, or just barely meeting, basic quality standards for higher education institutions.

Many of the fixes the college put in place, such as a new data tracking system to identify its strengths and weaknesses, are so recent there’s no proof yet they work.

Others are far behind schedule, such as a program to improve student advising that was supposed to launch this school year but is stalled until next year.

The fall semester, which starts in three weeks, will serve as a brief test period that could help convince PCC’s accreditor that the school is on the right track, Moses said.

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“This semester is the most critical semester in Pima’s history,” he told the board.

“We understand that we’re not there yet,” he said. “We have a lot of areas we still need to improve in.”

PCC learned this week that the Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission will send a review team to Tucson on Sept. 26-27 to see how much has improved since the last accreditation visit.

That visit, in 2014, identified 11 areas of concern ranging from high turnover among key employees to lack of attention to program quality.

Review teams typically meet with a wide cross-section during their visits, including students, employee groups, taxpayers and Governing Board members.

Board member Sylvia Lee asked Moses to provide the board with “talking points” so they can better answer questions from reviewers. He agreed to provide “bullet points” but said board members aren’t likely to need them.

The HLC is expected to make a final decision on PCC’s fate in February.