The University of Hawaii at Manoa has received a full 10 years of accreditation, the longest period possible, by the Senior College & University Commission of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, UH officials announced today.

The accreditation process is an indication of institutional quality, because accreditation is required by the U.S. Department of Education for students to be able to access federal financial assistance, including student loans. UH Manoa has been fully accredited since 1955.

“Receiving the full 10 years of reaffirmation shows that Hawaii’s flagship university continues to operate at the highest level of excellence when it comes to providing higher education for the people of Hawaii,” UH President David Lassner said in a news release. “It also shows that we are committed to continuous improvement as we meet the needs of our students and our state.”

The work toward accreditation began in 2017 and involved a new WASC process called “Thematic Pathway for Reaffirmation,” in which a university is a required to demonstrate compliance with WASC standards while advancing issues important to its campus community. UH Manoa’s themes were “Native Hawaiian Place of Learning,” “Transformational Student Success,” and “Academic Innovation and Engaged Learning.”

The WASC in a letter dated Tuesday praised UH Manoa for numerous achievements. Among them were the Wayfinding Project, which incorporates Native Hawaiian language and navigation as part of becoming a “Native Hawaiian Place of Learning”; and the Institute for Sustainability and Resilience, which focuses on topics of critical importance to the state and the development of sustainability courses as a curricular innovation.

But following the WASC team’s visit last fall, recommendations for improvement included reducing an “overreliance on soft money and volunteerism in implementing programs and services in areas that otherwise are best supported with permanent institutional resources”; developing a policy that “clearly defines conflict of interest,” which is needed because of the unique executive structure under which the UH Manoa CEO serves as the UH system president; and continuing work on “the journey of becoming a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning.”