NAAC Rolls Out Certification for Compliance Officers
Compliance officers already administer a certification exam to coaches each year, but starting soon, they will be taking a test of their own:
Those who complete the compliance-certification program—which is expected to cover about 10 different NCAA bylaws and take around three hours to finish online—will receive “continuing compliance education” credits, similar to the continuing-legal-education credits that lawyers must earn. Those compliance credits, combined with attendance at the annual National Association for Athletics Compliance meeting or NCAA regional rules seminars, will keep compliance officers in good standing.
This is a long-time coming, and will hopefully get paired with other requirements to be a certified compliance officer, like an ethical code that goes above and beyond NCAA requirements. Three hours is fairly involved, especially compared to the hour-long coaches recruiting certification exam. Plus this makes attendance at one or more of the annual professional development events mandatory to maintain a certification.
The biggest question left is how long until institutions start requiring all compliance officers they hire to be certified by NAAC? If it does become a major element of infractions cases, i.e. having non-certified compliance staff almost guarantees a lack of institutional control charge, then it should be almost instantaneous. At the very least, I now have a go-to answer when someone asks me what to do to break into compliance.