President of CHEA Makes the Case for Accreditation

Available to subscribers of The Chronicle of Higher Education HERE

Essentially, she cites recent innovations in accreditation, its functions of peer review, continuous process improvement, and approval of schools for financial aid programs.

Regarding the question of who should/would control higher education, the states or the federal government:

If, for example, the federal government assumed primary responsibility for ensuring and improving quality in higher education, how could this be carried out in the context of current law that prohibits federal control of education? Would the government establish another large bureaucracy that would function as a federal ministry of education? Where would the resources to run such an agency come from?

If the states took on the role of accreditation, how would we deal with 50 systems of quality review with, in all likelihood, 50 sets of varying standards and expectations? Would each state set its own standard to review public institutions? How would the states deal with private institutions? What would be the implications when, for example, students seek to transfer credits from one system to another? And if either level of government filled the role of accreditation, would issues concerning the academic quality of higher education be politicized in ways we have so far managed to avoid?

Regarding replacing accreditation with some other system:


Accreditation could be replaced with yet another private system of quality review, but how would that be configured? Would such a system emerge from the corporate sector? If the higher-education enterprise did not take the lead, how could we ensure that the quality review would be conducted by those who are experienced and knowledgeable about our country's colleges and universities? Who would pay for this system? And could an alternative private system command the extraordinary cadre of volunteer teachers and scholars that is central to the effectiveness of the current accreditation process?

My take: In 1974, Alexander Mood predicted that accreditors would become unnecessary, they would fade away and the quality of colleges and universities would stand on their own. But with more than 6,000 degree-granting institutions in the U.S., it is difficult to tell the good from the not-so-good, or even from the bad. Accreditation does this.

 

Rich: Thanks for the post. It's interesting that she has little directly positive to say, but uses a string of fear-questions to argue for the indispensability of accreditation. She may be quite right about "apres moi le deluge" (sorry, can't do diacritical marks), but others--including you
--have done a far better job making a positive case for accreditation. Since I have better things to waste money on than a subscription to the Chronic Hell, I dunno if what's quoted exhausts her repertoire. She sounds purely reactionary, though,which only opens the doors for those who shun quality control in education like vampires shun the light of day.
(We Carpathian peasants know about them thangs.)