RULES
Triangulated Administration
COFSA is to be run by five Steering Committee members. The Executive Director must be someone who is unaffiliated with either faculty-schools or the accreditation agencies in the system. The Representative Directors are a director from an accreditation agency that COFSA oversees and a director from a faculty-school in the system. There are two other members of the Steering Committee. These are Assistant Directors, and they can come from faculty schools or from accreditation agencies. COFSA is a member-run nonprofit organization, and forming the Steering Committee this way allows for all voting parties to be represented under one unaffiliated director (the Executive Director).
Public transparency
Each accreditation agency recognized by COFSA must have all of its core information available as open-access factsheets posted online. This information includes names of the directors and public council members; the status of nonprofit registration; the funds raised and donations received by the accreditation agency; and the total cost of the review/accreditation process. All an agency’s financial information (taxes, donations) must be readily available for annual inspection by COFSA.
Professionalism
Each accreditation agency’s web site, as well as the web sites of the faculty schools it accredits, must meet the professional standards, in appearance and function, set by COFSA. As far as professionalism in practice, COFSA has the right to directly contact faculty directors of the faculty schools accredited by the accreditation agencies to gather information as to how the accreditation process was handled.
Legal compliance
All accreditation agencies must work within the mandates of federal laws and also of the laws of the states in which faculty schools operate. The state laws differ from state to state, and accreditation agencies must demonstrate full knowledge of this variance. All members of an accreditation agency must pass background checks every 5 years.
Sustainability
All accreditation agencies of faculty schools must have at least 5 main personnel members, must have a solvent and sustainable budget, and must redundantly archive all records with COFSA. Ideally, the faculty-school system must have at least two accreditation agencies. If there is only one agency, it must be willing to split into two agencies when it has 30 members (including directors, advisors, and blind-panel assessors).
Systemic integrity
All accreditation agencies must follow standardized rules for the accreditation process, and these rules are set by COFSA. This uniformity enables transfer of credits between the faculty schools at the ground level of the faculty-school system, and it strengthens the way accreditation agencies can work together to ensure mutual health in the middle. Rules can be changed only when 70 percent of the council members of all accreditation agencies under COFSA requests a change, and when that change is subsequently approved by 70 percent of all faculty members of the faculty schools under the agencies.