Ann Neal Presentation: The Future of Accreditation

Hi Everyone - Anne is the President of ACTA. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonpartisan, nonprofit, educational organization committed to academic freedom, excellence and accountability at America's colleges and universities.

In the presentation Anne discusses some of the prevailing problems and focuses on ways we can improve the accreditation process so that it truly measures quality and provides parents and taxpayers with more information about whether and how institutions of higher education are doing their job.

Given the always lively discussions around accreditation I thought you might find this of interest.


The talk is published on the ACTA website at

https://www.goacta.org/publications/index.cfm?categoryid=F7463827-E8CB-0EEB-CB5E54F28E2D7E10.

If that link doesn't work, please go to www.goacta.org then click "Publications" at the top, then "Speeches and Testimony." It is the second item.

Mary A

 

I do agree with her fundamentally. The problem as I see it is the system is not able to handle the unorthodox and in practice low profit programs that can be sound. Let me use Clayton University when it was starting out as an example they had a perfectly legitimate approach, qualified educators since all had to have proper credentials to mentor and offered a nice overall option for people to earn a degree. Yet they sought accreditation in a system that failed to understand them or accept their model was viable, learning contracts and specific outcomes. So they failed to take and I feel ended up becoming a degree mill granting unaccredited degrees outside the US.

I would put this out as an idea that would never get approved. What if a group of academics decided to offer free degrees using a fixed program of great works, over the internet and charged only small fees for paperwork and record keeping. Even if their degree efforts were real and sincere and they only offered a BA in Humanities due to their lack of funds they would never get even near "The System" as it is. In fact any attempt to have something tutorial with little money internationally that was a real effort would fail due to how the system is set-up towards schools with money. And standards that are not in line with what really matters. Is the student being educated in a real way and that supported by legitimate academics and/or professionals, the latter for perhaps applied approaches to a subject such as art.

The system cannot simply fit such models even if they would be sound and creative options, unless the parties have a great deal of money to make the attempt.

Rather why not have accreditation that fits these at a minimal level I would use only four criteria.

1. Is the program in its design a sincere attempt at education, excludes anything like a degree mill just at that level.

2. Are those teaching in a standard that would be acceptable for the degree being granted, such as a masters degree to teach a unit for a bachelors.

3. Are the students more likely than not learning on par with another student at any accredited program (or similar non-American program).

4. Can they properly maintain records long term and have sufficient internet resources ,or other resources, to expediate education based on their education model.