The Higher Learning Commission’s upcoming policy changes mark the biggest shift in accreditation processes in over a decade. Starting in Fall 2025, institutions across the HLC region will face new expectations, new systems, and new scrutiny.
For institutions aiming to maintain good standing or preparing for reaffirmation, the message is clear: the time to prepare is now.
In our last article, we discussed the critical role course evaluations play in accreditation reviews. Now, let’s focus on what you need to be doing TODAY to get your school in best standing for HLC accreditation:
2025 Is a Turning Point
Three major updates will converge in the 2025–2026 academic year:
- Revised Criteria for Accreditation take effect September 1, 2025.
- The Assurance System is being retired and replaced by the new Canopy platform.
- The Institutional Update (IU) has been overhauled with new data validation rules and additional student success metrics.
Individually, each change would require institutional attention. Taken together, they demand strategic coordination across institutional research, academic affairs, and IT teams.
As the HLC notes, “Every Assurance Argument, policy and evidence map must be realigned before 2025–26 visits”
(HLC Criteria Overview)
What’s Actually Changing?
1. New Criteria, Clearer Expectations
The HLC’s updated Criteria for Accreditation and Assumed Practices, adopted in June 2024, emphasize transparency, accountability, and student-centered evidence.
In particular, Criteria 4 and 5 now require institutions to:
- Provide timely, disaggregated data on student learning and success
- Demonstrate clear use of that data to make measurable improvements
- Show that student feedback is actively informing institutional planning
“Institutions must provide fresh, contextualized evidence of improvement, not just artifacts from a previous review.”
(HLC Update, 2024)
2. Canopy Replaces the Assurance System
The HLC’s old Assurance System will sunset after the 2024–25 academic year. Its replacement, Canopy, offers a modern interface with drag-and-drop evidence upload, single sign-on, and integrated access to Institutional Update records.
But it also introduces a learning curve. Institutions must assign a Primary Filing Coordinator, retrain users, and reorganize their document repositories to match Canopy’s folder structure.
HLC has published a full Canopy Transition Guide to help institutions prepare.
3. Institutional Update Redesign
The IU process now includes:
- Streamlined questions with built-in data validations
- New student success fields, including disaggregated metrics by cohort, modality, and program
- Early alerts for data errors before submission
This places new demands on IR teams, especially for institutions without strong internal tools for data collection and analysis.
What This Means for Your Institution
These changes are not cosmetic. They increase the pressure to modernize how student data, especially student feedback, is collected, processed, and applied.
Many institutions are now grappling with:
- Evidence alignment and migration to fit Canopy’s structure
- Disaggregating student experience data for the IU and Criteria 4–5
- Documenting mid-cycle improvements tied to student outcomes
- Managing parallel readiness checklists for “old” and “new” systems during the transition year
The biggest pain point? Time. Accreditation teams are being asked to juggle platform transitions, revised policy alignment, and the fall-term workload; all within 12–18 months.
How EvalSystem Helps
EvalSystem was built to help institutions meet evolving accreditation needs—without adding to the institutional research workload.
Here’s how we support schools facing the 2025 HLC changes:
Seamless Canopy-Ready Documentation
EvalSystem automatically generates exportable PDFs and CSVs organized by course, instructor, question, and term. These evidence artifacts drop directly into Canopy’s folder structure—saving hours of manual reformatting and metadata cleanup.
IU-Aligned Disaggregation
Our platform tags every student response by course section, modality, term, and cohort. This makes it easy to produce disaggregated datasets required by the IU’s 2025 validation structure—without coding or spreadsheet merges.
Actionable Insights for Criteria 4 & 5
EvalSystem doesn’t just collect data. It offers real-time dashboards and AI-summarized comment analysis, allowing institutions to:
- Track student success indicators by course or program
- Identify recurring feedback themes across departments
- Document specific actions taken in response to student input
This creates a clear, evidence-backed narrative that supports both student success and accreditation goals.
Early Alerts for Student Success Initiatives
In line with the Student Success Quality Initiative, EvalSystem offers mid-term feedback tools and analytics that help flag at-risk courses early—allowing institutions to intervene before end-of-term outcomes are finalized.
White-Glove Support and Evidence Mapping
Accreditation is not one-size-fits-all. Our onboarding and success teams work directly with your accreditation and IR staff to map EvalSystem reports to HLC’s expectations. We help you define where each dataset or report fits into your Assurance Argument, your IU, and your internal planning.
The Bottom Line
The institutions best prepared for 2025 are those acting now. Whether your reaffirmation is scheduled in the next year or three years from now, the groundwork starts today: refining your systems, organizing your evidence, and building a clear pipeline from student feedback to institutional action.
Course evaluations are no longer just an academic courtesy. They are a strategic lever for compliance, transparency, and improvement.
Let’s Talk
At EvalSystem, we’re working with institutions across the HLC region to help them get ahead of the 2025 transition. Our platform and support model are designed to simplify compliance and strengthen institutional storytelling with clean, real-time data.
We’ve even put together this handy HLC Accreditation Checklist for any school leaders looking to prep for upcoming reviews.
Keep Reading
In our final article of the HLC accreditation series, we will walk through how to put it all together, from improving course evaluation protocols to prepping for HLC readiness, to arming your faculty and staff with the tools and answers they need to deliver the best experience for your students!