Balancing growth, quality as veterinary education landscape evolves
Over the years, fluctuations in the veterinary services market have created tension for veterinary education accreditors.
From 2008-15, a weak economy and new veterinary colleges coming online combined with changes in the delivery of veterinary education—shifting from a veterinary teaching hospital to a distributive clinical model—inadvertently turned the AVMA Council on Education’s (COE) accreditation practices into a lightning rod for controversy.
More recently, the council is being criticized as a barrier to rapid expansion of veterinary education and innovation in the face of uncertain demand.
The AVMA House of Delegates took on the topic of accreditation in this context during its Veterinary Information Forum (VIF), held January 10 during its winter session in Chicago. Discussion focused primarily on veterinary colleges and the COE but also touched on veterinary technology programs and their accreditation by the AVMA Committee on Veterinary Technician Education & Activities (CVTEA).
Quality assurance
Dr. David E. Granstrom, assistant executive vice president at the AVMA, explained in his talk before the House that accreditation ensures that a program prepares students for professional practice and to meet licensure or certification requirements. He emphasized that the role of an accreditor is to assure quality, not regulate.
Perhaps the most vocal critic of the COE lately has been Mark Cushing, founder of the Animal Policy Group. A great majority of proposed and new veterinary colleges have retained his services over the years to help them become accredited by the council. He’s also been a major proponent of the midlevel practitioner position in veterinary medicine.
In 2022, he went after the COE for adding a requirement in the accreditation standards that all proposed veterinary colleges participate in a consultative site visit before a comprehensive self-study and COE site visit can occur. His complaint was that doing so adds time to the process.
Dr. Granstrom, who is also AVMA’s chief accreditation and certification officer, said that a consultative visit is not meant to be punitive. Rather, “many times when people want to start a veterinary school, they don’t understand the accreditation process and what’s required,” he said.
A consultative visit is a short visit that’s designed to assist colleges in being successful in the accreditation process, in a risk-free environment. There is no penalty with a consultative site visit, however, if a veterinary college does not meet the requirements for a letter of reasonable assurance, they need to wait one year before applying. Then a site visit would need to be scheduled.
“(The accreditation process) takes some time. It’s a very thoughtful and detailed process. It is what it is because it needs to be. You can’t shortcut quality and expect a good outcome,” Dr. Granstrom said.
Then, just this past December, Cushing criticized the COE for not having requested authority from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) to evaluate schools’ distance learning programs. He claims doing so has delayed or reshaped accreditation site visits for new programs and caused concerns for existing schools that need remote learning tools to deliver their curricula.
Specifically, allowing distance education to any degree in veterinary colleges will require the development and federal approval of policies, procedures, and accreditation standards to include evaluation and assessment of veterinary education delivered through technology.
The COE just closed its call for comments on the potential use of distance education to deliver instruction—in whole or in part—at veterinary colleges.
A COE ad hoc committee has been dedicated to review this issue and make recommendations to the council. Other ad hoc committees are evaluating policies and procedures related to governance and distributive clinical education models.
Dr. Granstrom pointed out that the USDE and Council for Higher Education Accreditation already require the COE to have enough flexibility built into its standards that allows for innovation and creativity so that higher education can advance and adapt.
Meeting the needs
In fact, a main priority for both the COE and CVTEA is to maintain their capacity, efficiency, and flexibility as the number of new and expanding veterinary schools and veterinary technology programs continues to grow.
For the COE, that means implementing recommendations from its strategic planning process, including accreditation software enhancements and adding two staff members, Dr. Granstrom said. More site visitors are being trained to expand the site visitor pool. The council is also making an exception to its 12-visit policy to address requests from developing veterinary colleges by expanding to 14 or 15 site visits a year. Further, a process is being created to optimize communication and facilitate site visit preparation for veterinary colleges.
Right now, the COE accredits 53 veterinary colleges: 30 in the U.S., 18 internationally, and five in Canada. In addition, there are four provisionally accredited U.S. veterinary colleges and 10 proposed programs working toward accreditation.
Among the proposed programs, Rowan University has been granted a letter of reasonable assurance and plans to admit its first class this fall, Utah State University College of Veterinary Medicine had a comprehensive visit this past October for a letter of reasonable assurance, and another comprehensive site visit is being scheduled this year for Clemson University.
The CVTEA, meanwhile, added a staff member last year and created the Committee on the Advancement of Veterinary Technicians and Technologists to focus on utilization and promotion of veterinary technology, allowing the CVTEA to focus on accreditation responsibilities, Dr. Granstrom said.
Currently, 220 veterinary technology programs are recognized by the CVTEA and two new programs are scheduled for a site visit this year, potentially leading to initial accreditation. CVTEA volunteers completed 51 site visits in 2023, 48 in 2024, and 33 are scheduled for this year so far.
Clear communication
Despite being a major topic of discussion, accreditation remains as mystifying as ever to most veterinarians.
For example, some delegates expressed concern over how accreditation standards can be applied consistently across veterinary colleges with on-campus teaching hospitals and others with distributive models of clinical education.
Dr. Bill Grant, California alternate delegate, said in a meeting after the VIF that he felt very good about the COE accreditation process, particularly as it relates to distributive clinical education. He witnessed the process firsthand when he was at Western University for Health Sciences, which was the first veterinary school with that model of veterinary education to receive COE accreditation in 2008.
“Part of it is what the facility is being graded for. The other part is students themselves,” he said. “They really wanted us in the field to meet certain standards. It works. It surprised a lot of teaching hospitals. These (veterinary colleges) aren’t paying for having a big facility in their backyard, but they have students doing what they need to be. We know there’s more than one way to teach something. It’s not a black-and-white thing; there’s some shades of gray.”
Dr. Douglas McInnis, Oregon delegate, said House members would like to see greater communication with all stakeholders on the accreditation process going forward.
A version of this story appears in the March 2025 print issue of JAVMA
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