Empowering higher education professionals to enhance student learning, development, and success.
Mission.
The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS), a consortium of professional associations in higher education, promotes the use of its professional standards for the development, assessment, and improvement of quality student learning, programs, and services.
Purpose.
CAS was founded to implement several profession-wide initiatives, with emphasis on the developing and promulgating professional standards. The purposes of CAS are outlined below:
To establish, adopt, and disseminate unified and timely professional standards to guide student learning and develop support programs and services and related higher education initiatives.
To promote the assessment and improvement of higher education services and programs through self-study, evaluation, and the use of CAS standards.
To advance the use and importance of professional standards among practitioners and educators in higher education.
To develop and provide materials to assist and support practitioners and educators in the use of professional standards in higher education.
To promote and encourage higher education systems and institutions to focus attention on the assurance of quality in all educational endeavors.
To promote inter-association efforts to address the issues of quality assurance, student learning and development, and professional integrity in higher education.
To establish, adopt, and disseminate unified and timely professional preparation standards for the education of student affairs practitioners.
To promote the assessment and improvement of professional preparation graduate programs for student affairs administrators through the use of CAS standards for assessment, evaluation, and self-study purposes.
CAS exists to accomplish complementary tasks. A primary purpose is to provide a forum in which representatives from higher education organizations meet and interact for purposes of seeking consensus on the fundamental principles of “best practices” that can lead to enhanced professional standards. CAS provides a forum wherein all voices can be heard in the creation of timely, useful standards to guide practice. CAS encourages viable links among professional associations, most of which focus on highly specialized functions, and this collaboration results in the creation of standards that represent a profession-wide perspective rather than a narrow and limited viewpoint.
Not only does CAS provide a vehicle for developing functional area and academic preparation standards, but it also provides a credible profession-wide entity to promulgate standards and related materials and to encourage practitioners to apply the standards effectively in their work with students. The CAS consortium speaks with a single voice that bridges numerous specialty areas and can represent the profession-at-large on matters concerning professional standards and quality assurance.