NCC gets a jolt of reality from a harsh accrediation review

A Middle States Commission on Higher Education site-visit official did Nassau Community College a favor last week by blasting the institution into reality.

And maybe the commission could help the college even more by making good on a threat to issue a show-cause order, which would require NCC’s administration to address a key failing — integrity — or suffer immediate revocation of its acceditation.

Such a move would be harsh, a hard slap in the face to a proud institution. But the action would — for the first time in too long — focus attention on NCC and the needs of its students.

There are advantages to a crisis.

The college community would have no choice other than to come together and to coalesce around leadership.

Either that, or the college could die.

The crisis also would focus attention on Nassau County and New York State, which significantly have decreased their funding to the institution. And to the county’s Republican and Democratic parties, both of which over the years have tapped NCC as a reliable source of patronage, jobs and contracts.

The last time NCC fell short in commission standards was in 2009. Back then, the college was found wanting on three standards.

This time around, according to a preliminary report the head of an eight-member commission team made verbally to NCC administrators and top faculty, the college failed half of the commission’s 14 standards. The site visit is part of a lengthy accrediation process, which usually is confidential.

But at NCC, everything’s a sieve.

On Monday, Thomas Dolan, a former Great Neck school superintendent who is now NCC’s interim president, fired off a missive to employees. Much of it — symptomatic, sadly, of the college’s finger-pointing culture — was devoted to the “irresponsible action” of whomever leaked to Newsday a memo Dolan wrote after NCC officials were briefed by the head of the site visit team.

“What this institution does not need is another manufactured distraction, which is what this is,” he wrote.

Well, how about a real one then?

The site team found NCC failing in one of seven areas involving “educational effectiveness.” Specifically lacking in this one: “Assessment of student learning demonstrates that, at graduation, or other appropriate points, the institution’s students have knowledge, skills, and competencies consistent with instituti onal and appropriate higher education goals.”

And then there are measures of “institutional context,” for which NCC fell short in six of seven standards: Planning, resource and institutional renewal; institutional resources; leadership and governance; administration; and integrity.

But it did pass “mission and goals.”

Of particular concern to the site team was the school’s fail on integrity, which remains on full public display via YouTube video of the December and February meetings of NCC’s board of trustees.

In December, a majority of the board voted to hire former Hempstead Town Supervisor — and failed Republican Nassau district attorney candidate — Kate Murray for a job — which was not vacant, had not been advertised, and for which Murray had not applied. In February, a board member read into the record statements which seemed to imply potential wrongdoing by fellow board members, at one point demanding that they — she did not name names — resign.

What was she talking about? Don’t know. Can’t know — because other than another board member interrogating speakers about whether they knew the supposed author of an email — the board neither elaborated, nor publicly made moves to investigate.

The site visit team was on campus just three days. And they saw the issues. The question now is: What’s NCC — even as it awaits word from the State University of New York on who will be its new president — going to do about it?