During the last two decades, the effectiveness of higher education institutions has been challenged by agents such as the federal and state governments, educational foundations, the general public, students and their families, and faculty and administrators in the institutions themselves.  Colleges and universities have been challenged to define their purpose and objectives more specifically, to develop mechanisms to determine the extent to which objectives are being met, and to actively engage in program formation and modification both to enable and to demonstrate increasingly successful accomplishment of the objectives.

In 1985, the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the accrediting agency for Roanoke College, passed a major change in its accrediting procedures.  This change asked colleges and universities to be more intentional, more systematic, more analytical, and more willing to engage in efforts to improve the effectiveness of their institutions.  The term, institutional effectiveness, was consciously selected to denote that the efforts had to be college-wide -- that they pertained to both administrative and academic departments -- and that the goal was to be an effective institution.

Specifically, the focus on institutional effectiveness required institutions to do four things:

(1) To sharpen the institutional mission statement and the expanded list of institutional objectives.

(2) To identify intended educational (instructional), research, and service outcomes that are consistent with the mission and that are prioritized by the institution.

(3) To assess the extent to which the objectives and intended outcomes are actually being accomplished.

(4) (Based on assessment findings) to adjust the mission statement, objectives, intended outcomes, and/or activities designed to accomplish them in order to enhance institutional effectiveness.

The consequences of these requirements are an enhancement of the importance of the mission statement (it should be the starting point and the stimulus for institutional change and not just a pro forma statement briefly reviewed every ten years), increased visibility of the objectives and intended outcomes sought by the institution, and more focused and systematic effors to assess the extent to which the mission is being fulfilled, objectives are being realized, and intended outcomes are actually occurring.