Compliance, Audits, and Reporting
What the exam tests
Compliance and reporting: accreditation, state and federal rules, consumer information, audit readiness, and data quality.
Core rules
- Maintain written policies, delegations, assessment standards, and records sufficient for an external reviewer.
- Know accreditation limits on CPL and program-specific restrictions; document how faculty validate equivalence.
- Track required data: requests, awards, methods, credit hours, demographics, denials, appeals, and turnaround.
- Audit readiness means files can be reconstructed without the original assessor present.
- Vendor and third-party agreements need data privacy, security, and outcome accountability clauses.
- Report accurately; do not report only successful awards or omit denied requests.
- Corrective action plans should include owner, deadline, and verification.
Worked example
An accreditation review samples 15 CPL files. Two lack rubric evidence; one posts credit for a course not in the catalog. The institution creates a corrective action plan: rebuild the posting rule, retrain assessors, and add a pre-posting check. Reasoning: the finding is a system-control failure, not just a missing document.
Traps that cost marks
Missing audit trail; reporting inconsistent definitions; ignoring state authorization; no vendor oversight; treating a denied request as a non-event.