Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing: Ensuring Quality in Nursing Education

Accreditation plays a vital role in higher education, especially in fields like nursing, where graduates directly impact people's lives. The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) is a leading accrediting body that sets comprehensive standards and criteria for nursing education programs. This article provides an overview of ACEN, its purpose, accreditation process, and significance in the nursing profession.

What is ACEN?

The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) is one of the three program accrediting agencies for nursing education in the United States and its territories. It is also a subsidiary of the National League for Nursing. ACEN accredits nursing education programs for every level of nursing, from associate level to doctorate. ACEN has been safeguarding a standard baseline of quality among all nursing programs for over 80 years. Its roots reach back to 1893 when the first nursing organization was established in the US. While the organization has grown and evolved over the past century, it has always been dedicated to promoting excellence in nursing education and advancing healthcare standards and practices.

Purpose, Mission and Goals

The purpose of ACEN is to identify and provide accreditation to educational institutions that emulate its commitment to excellence in all levels of nursing education.

ACEN’s goal is to encourage peer review, cultivate equity and opportunity across the nursing profession, and continually update standards to meet the evolving realities of the healthcare industry. Each of these goals supports ACEN’s primary commitment to push nursing education forward, ultimately ensuring that patients receive optimal care from qualified nurses.

ACEN develops standards and criteria to assess an institution's ability to develop students’ aptitude for problem-solving and analytical thinking and their ability to pair good judgment with medical knowledge.

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The Significance of Accreditation

Accreditation is a voluntary, non-governmental process that uses peer review to determine if academic programs meet public confidence. Accreditation agencies use rigorous criteria in seeking to improve institutions or programs to achieve higher outcomes.

Benefits of ACEN Accreditation

ACEN accreditation ensures that select nursing programs meet the rigorous educational requirements necessary to safeguard quality in the nursing profession. Programs granted ACEN accreditation are regularly reviewed to ensure that they continue to meet ACEN standards and criteria and produce qualified nursing students.

Enhanced Credibility: ACEN accreditation is a peer-review process, meaning an independent body deems your nursing program to be of the highest possible standard.
Increased Student Recruitment and Retention: Students who graduate from unaccredited institutions cannot move on to health care careers. ACEN accreditation shows them that they can trust that your institution prioritizes their best interests.
Continual Program Improvement: Higher education institutions thrive on continuous improvement. ACEN accreditation standards require review every five years.

Importance for Students

Students may benefit from accredited nursing programs because they tend to be more widely recognized and valued by employers. Furthermore, state boards of nursing typically mandate that students have graduated from accredited nursing programs to be eligible to take the NCLEX® exam. Students that attend non-accredited programs are put in a precarious professional position which may result in obstacles further down the road, especially when a student seeks admission to programs for advanced practice roles. ACEN accreditation ameliorates these concerns by ensuring students will receive a quality nursing education based on well-established principles.

Impact on Institutions

Educational institutions only stand to benefit from accreditation by emphasizing the rigor and quality of their curriculum.

Accreditation Process

Before a program can begin its process toward ACEN accreditation, it must submit a Candidacy Eligibility Application and Candidacy Presentation. ACEN accepts submissions for about 10 weeks during two accreditation cycles-July 1, to December 31, and January, 1 to June 30.

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Self-Study Report: A program must conduct a self-evaluation to identify how it conforms to ACEN Accreditation and Criteria. The most crucial ingredient in your study is data. It should consist of a systematic, evidence-based analysis of your program’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Site Visit: ACEN peer evaluators will visit your campus and observe your program. Peer evaluators visit the program site to weigh their first-hand observations against claims made in the self-study report. The site visit is a pivotal element in the accreditation process. Peer reviewers scrutinize your program for a few days, and being prepared can streamline the process.
Evaluation Review Panel (ERP): A program-specific ERP makes an independent judgment after evaluating documentation from steps 1 and 2.

It’s important to note that students who have graduated from a program before it gained accreditation will not retroactively receive ACEN program status. Instead, a program’s initial accreditation status is effective from the date its candidacy was approved by ACEN (assuming its accreditation was granted).

ACEN plays no part in administering or renewing nursing licenses. Instead, ACEN works to ensure that certain standards and criteria are met by the nursing programs it accredits.

ACEN accredited programs must be reviewed 5 years following accreditation approval. If they continue to meet ACEN standards and criteria, they will be granted continuing accreditation and reviewed every 8 years. Programs are also surveyed annually and may undergo additional review should any significant changes occur within the nursing program, such as a significant decline in NCLEX pass rates.

Costs for ACEN accreditation include fees for both initial and continuing accreditation, along with a candidacy fee and a number of case-by-case service fees.

Maintaining Accreditation

Your program must be reviewed five years after approval. If it meets ACEN standards, ACRN will grant you continuing accreditation, which is reviewed every eight years.

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ACEN Standards and Criteria

Section 3 of the 2023 ACEN Accreditation Manual details ACEN’s standards and criteria for accreditation. The 5 standards have been developed and agreed upon as a way to measure the quality of a nursing program. Criteria enumerate how each standard must be evaluated.

Mission and Administrative Capacity: Nursing programs must have the ability to facilitate student learning outcomes while emulating the mission, goals, and values of the governing organization.
- Criteria to meet this standard include providing students and communities of interest the opportunity to participate in decision-making and employing a qualified nurse administrator to be responsible for leading the nursing program. Your nursing program’s mission and philosophy must align with ACEN’s mission, goals, and values. These goals include ensuring effective program delivery and achieving student learning outcomes.
Faculty: Faculty must have the ability to help students achieve optimal learning outcomes assigned by the governing body.
- Your nursing program faculty must also have up to date expertise in teaching, assessment methods, and the principles of diversity. Faculty in the nursing program must have the necessary education and experience for their roles to ensure they support student learning outcomes.
Resources: Policies and services must align with student learning outcomes.
- Criteria to meet this standard include public access to nursing programs and governing body policies, ACEN accreditation status, and ACEN contact information. Furthermore, formal complaints must be resolved with evidence of due process and timely resolution, student records must be maintained, and students must be notified of policy changes. Your nursing program must prioritize student policies and services to boost student achievement. Your accreditation status must be current and accessible. Key policies - like admissions, progression, graduation, and how to file complaints, must be public, current and fair.
Curriculum: The curriculum must support student learning outcomes and maintain up-to-date safe practices.
- Criteria to meet this standard include ensuring that the curriculum is developed and regularly reviewed by qualified faculty, simulates laboratory environments where necessary, employs teaching strategies to accommodate various learning styles, and reflects evidenced-based nursing practices. It must feature unified student learning outcomes based on professional nursing standards. Your curriculum must help students achieve their academic goals and master core competencies while ensuring safe practices in today’s health care landscape.
Outcomes: Using a systematic plan for evaluation (SPE), program assessments must demonstrate that students have achieved, or are approaching, competency in student learning outcomes.
- Criteria to meet this standard include a faculty-developed SPE that describes its assessment of student learning outcome achievement, nursing program completion rate, exam pass rate and licensure, and job placement. Your nursing program assessment must evaluate student learning and program outcomes through a systematic plan for evaluation (SPE). Faculty should create and implement the SPE to assess student learning outcomes and role-specific competencies.

Preparing for ACEN Accreditation

Understand the criteria: The better you understand what ACEN is looking for, the more effectively you can meet its criteria.
Conduct a comprehensive self-study: Your self-study is an excellent opportunity to identify and address opportunities for improvement in your existing program.
Implement an application action plan: Once the study is complete, develop an action plan based on the findings.
Prepare for the site visit: The site visit is a pivotal element in the accreditation process. Peer reviewers scrutinize your program for a few days, and being prepared can streamline the process.
Develop a sound strategy for approaching education using your past and current data: With data-driven insights, you can identify and address improvement opportunities in plenty of time.

Utilizing Technology for Accreditation Readiness

Watermark’s accreditation readiness solutions streamline, simplify, and enhance accreditation and reporting. Our Educational Impact Suite (EIS) gathers and synthesizes your programmatic data into actionable insights and reports. Based on the findings, you can collaborate with your team and develop an action plan for meeting ACEN assessment criteria.

Distance Education and ACEN

Many nursing programs implemented the use of distance education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty must consider the mission of the governing organization and the fiscal, physical, technological, and learning resources available while ensuring the quality of the education being provided when using any type of distance learning method of delivery.

For students to be eligible to receive federal financial aid through Title IV-HEA funding, a nursing education program or its governing organization must be accredited by a Title IV-HEA gatekeeper and the governing organization's institutional accrediting agency (e.g., SACSCOC, HLC, ABHES, COE) must approve the governing organization's use of distance education.

The ACEN Glossary (2021) defines distance education for nursing courses as any educational method of delivery “in which instruction occurs when a student and instructor are not physically in the same place” (p. 9). Therefore, as defined by the ACEN, a program is using a form of distance education when it implements a hybrid delivery method. Additionally, all use of distance education must be consistent with ACEN Policy #15 Distance Education, which outlines ACEN's criteria for effective implementation of distance education.

Key Considerations for Distance Education

Congruence with Mission: The use of distance education must be congruent with the mission of the governing organization and consistent with the mission and/or philosophy of the nursing education unit (Criterion 1.11).
Sufficient Resources: The program must ensure that there are sufficient fiscal, physical, technological, and learning resources to ensure achievement of the end-of-program student learning outcomes and program outcomes (Criterion 5.4).
Faculty Support and Development: Ensure that the faculty and the students have access to the technology needed for delivery of distance education and that the faculty receive ongoing development and support for use of the technologies selected (Criterion 2.10) and maintain their expertise in distance education and related instructional processes (Criterion 2.6).
Substantive Interaction: Any technology or processes used to deliver distance education must ensure substantive interaction through the implementation of two or more of the following activities: providing direct instruction, assessing or providing feedback on student coursework, providing information or responding to questions about content of a course or competency, facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency, or other activities that demonstrate and ensure faculty and student engagement in the teaching/learning process.
Regular Interaction: Distance education practices must provide for regular interaction between faculty and students through predicted and scheduled interactions, monitoring of student engagement and success, as well as prompt and proactive interaction with students when student performance and engagement warrant intervention or when students request the interaction.
Technology Requirements and Support: To support student success in courses or programs delivered using distance education, students must be informed about any technology requirements (Criterion 3.9). Students must also be provided an orientation to the technology that will be used (e.g., learning management system) and must have access to support for the technology (Criterion 3.8) to further support and facilitate their success in the program of study.
Clear Learning Outcomes: As with all curriculum development, faculty must have a clear vision of the desired student learning outcomes. Student learning outcomes must be made explicit and must be based on professional nursing standards and contemporary practice.

What if Your Nursing Program Isn't Accredited?

In order for programmatic accreditation to apply to a nursing program graduate’s education, the date of graduation must fall within the nursing program’s accreditation period. Accreditation is not retro active, and there are no policies of grandfathering for previous cohorts. Additionally, the ACEN accredits nursing programs, not individuals. If the effective date of ACEN accreditation is not inclusive of your date of graduation, you have not graduated from an ACEN-accredited program.

You may find that some employers, nursing programs, and State Boards of Nursing require that you have graduated from a nationally accredited nursing program as part of their employment, admissions, or approval policies.

Transfer of Credits: Your nursing credits may not transfer to other schools.
NCLEX Eligibility: You may not be as qualified or prepared to take the NCLEX exam, and in the worst cases, you may not be able to take the NCLEX due to certain restrictions. It depends on the judgment of your state’s board of nursing, but it’s possible that your state will not allow you to take the NCLEX if your school is not accredited. It may be a good idea to contact your state’s board of nursing directly to verify that the school you are interested in will qualify you to take the NCLEX.
Financial Aid: You may not be eligible for federal financial aid.
Employment Prospects: You may have more difficulty getting hired.

Other Accreditation Agencies

Not all nursing schools or programs are accredited. While CCNE and ACEN are the primary nursing accreditation bodies, there are other accreditation agencies for some specialty fields, such as nurse anesthesia and nurse-midwifery programs. While CCNE and ACEN are national accreditation bodies, there are also regional accreditation agencies at the institutional level. Regional accreditation can help increase student access to federal financial aid. Enrolling in a regionally accredited school also comes with the assurance of a trusted, recognized institution that is often nonprofit.

CCNE vs. ACEN

Department of Education-approved agencies. Agencies serving the nursing education segment include the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) and the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN). Both agencies accredit baccalaureate- and graduate-level programs. Initially, a distinction between CCNE and ACEN accreditations was that CCNE only accredited school nursing programs and not transition-to-practice or doctoral programs, but this is no longer the case. CCNE is the accreditation arm of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) that accredits bachelor’s- and master’s-level programs, post-graduate APRN certificate programs and entry-to-practice residency for nurses. As part of their accreditation process, CCNE mandates that all degree programs and other types of programs include clinical practice experience for students. The agency has strict guidelines for clinical practice experience for both online and on-campus programs. Many nursing programs mandate ACEN accreditation for graduate-level nursing program admission.

Regional Accreditation

ACEN-recognized regional accrediting agencies cover areas representing the entire United States, but they are institutional accrediting agencies.

Verifying Accreditation

How can I check if a nursing school is accredited? Lists of accredited nursing schools and programs are available from reputable accrediting agencies, such as the ACEN, the CCNE or a regional accrediting agency.

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