Accreditation catches the eye of Congress

In October 2002, accreditating agencies found themselves in an uncomfortable position: the subject of a congressional hearing about their value and effectiveness. Congressman Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness that held the hearing, set the tone for the event when he said, "If a college and its programs are accredited, the assumption by most is that it provides a quality education. The purpose of this hearing is to determine if that assumption is accurate."

The timeliness of the hearing was underscored by a report issued by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which found "little evidence that accreditation is a reliable quality indicator" and criticized both the costs of accreditation and its emphasis on political correctness. While the ACTA report was hardly an unbiased analysis and its conclusions did not seem to align well with the problems that it cited, the report did highlight the growing public interest in what accrediting agencies do and how they do it.

The hearing also was an illustration of a bigger set of questions about the "quality" of higher education. Indeed, ample evidence suggests that this broad issue is likely to be a source of considerable interest in the pending reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. And, since accrediting agencies provide the primary form of external quality review for higher education, this means that the role, function, and effectiveness of these organizations may be a central consideration during reauthorization.

Accreditors never asked to play a public policy role. When the first accrediting agencies were created more than one hundred years ago, they were based on the conviction that higher education would benefit from voluntary, nongovernmental oversight. Their public policy function emerged after enactment of the World War II GI Bill of Rights, which gave veterans free access to higher education. Unfortunately, this landmark law did not distinguish legitimate educational institutions from fly-by-night trade schools that soon sprang up to separate veterans from their federal benefits.

When Congress approved the Korean War GI Bill in 1952, it addressed the problem by mandating that only schools approved by accrediting agencies that were "a reliable authority" on educational quality were eligible to receive benefits. The Higher Education Act of 1965 adopted the same approach, and accreditation, which previously had been a purely voluntary activity, became essential for every higher education institution. As the amount of federal student aid increased over the last half-century, so did the importance of being (and remaining) accredited. Today, with more than $60 billion in student aid provided by the federal government every year, few colleges could withstand the loss of accreditation.

What's the Trouble?

There is, in truth, no "trouble with accreditation." It remains a rigorous process of external quality review to examine the goals and missions of colleges and universities. The key features of accreditation-self-studies to assess performance, peer review, intensive site visits, and continual monitoring and oversight-provide a thorough assessment of quality and a clear roadmap for institutional self-improvement. Indeed, if anything, because accreditation is a nongovernmental process that evaluates institutions against a mission-specific benchmark, it has become a model of extraordinary interest to foreign institutions. It is ironic that just as other countries seek to emulate our model, some policy makers conclude that the United States might need a different approach.

We live in an era that seeks to maximize the amount of information available to the public and demands transparency from all manner of institutions. This trend toward openness and disclosure has been growing for decades. Consider efforts to open up government to public inspection:

A generation ago, there was no Freedom of Information Act, government meetings were usually closed, and televised sessions of Congress were unthinkable. Today, these are unremarkable parts of the political process.

The movement toward openness has recently been given a boost by the wave of corporate financial scandals-Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Global Crossing, and the rest. New federal legislation passed in the wake of these corporate collapses will pry open corporate doors in hopes of avoiding further meltdowns.

Giving consumers more information to help them make important choices is also a popular theme. Consider health care. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published report cards that graded the 17,000 nursing homes that accept Medicare reimbursement, rating them on such criteria as the percentage of patients with bedsores. Under pressure from HHS, American hospitals will soon begin to publish report cards to enable consumers to evaluate the quality of hospitals.

In this complex and shifting environment, accreditation faces at least four challenges. First, accreditation is not well understood outside the academy. Policy makers do not understand the difference between regional and specialized accreditation, nor can they draw a distinction between regional and national accrediting agencies. In the same vein, the media and the public also know that accreditation is important, but do not know why or what it means when an institution is accredited. Lacking detailed knowledge, many external constituencies make assumptions and rely on inaccurate perceptions.

Second, accreditation is of limited value to consumers. While accreditors routinely make their final determination of accreditation status available to the public, accreditation reports are not routinely available. Institutions may provide information about the results of an accreditation review and perhaps some of the major findings, but details are rarely released. Even though consumers may know the accreditation status of an institution, this often is not enough information on which to base important judgments such as deciding where to attend college.

The truth is, we live in an era when the public has a seemingly insatiable appetite for detailed information about the success and effectiveness of products and services that are important to them and their families. A high price tag only increases the desire for accurate and unbiased information.

All colleges are uncomfortable with simple statistical measures because the diversity of our enterprise makes it virtually impossible to devise benchmarks that will work equally well for all institutions. The mission-specific focus of accreditation provides a more complete and accurate assessment of institutional success, but we have been unable (or unwilling) to find a way to make detailed, user-friendly accreditation information widely available.

Third, accreditation, as with any process that relies on subjective judgments, can easily find itself mired in controversy. When it is quietly successful, as it is 95 percent of the time, accreditation garners no attention. However, when policy makers do focus on accreditation, it is because of controversy. In the 1990s, for example, several accreditation agencies ran into difficulty over standards that seemed to be based on political correctness rather than academic performance. Moreover, decisions to terminate accreditation-while rare-are invariably controversial because they eliminate federal student aid eligibility, a step that is almost always fatal. Institutions seeking to stave off closure seek political help on Capitol Hill. They invariably portray the accreditation process as a flawed and biased undertaking. Members of Congress are always sympathetic to such pleas.

Finally, accreditation suffers because many college and university officials are ambivalent about it. Most college presidents and provosts believe that accreditation is too tough on their own institution and too easy on the college down the road. Moreover, the vast majority of presidents are highly critical of specialized accreditation and the budgetary implications that it carries for campuses. These criticisms may be valid, but they do little to increase respect for accreditation. And, when communicated to policy makers and the media, they only undermine public confidence.

Consider the Alternatives Winston Churchill once famously said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." The same can be said of accreditation. Its shortcomings are real and well known. But accreditation's intensive focus on a college or university's mission means it provides a careful, detailed, and accurate assessment of each institution. A school that is undergoing, or that has just recently experienced, an accreditation review knows a great deal about its strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, administrators, faculty, and staff know far more than would be the case after any other sort of institutional review mandated by the state or, God forbid, the federal government.

But we live in an era that prizes openness and the availability of consumer information. Already Congressman Tom Petri (R-Wise.), a thoughtful Harvard University graduate, has introduced legislation to sever the link between federal student aid and accreditation. It is not clear what Congressman Petri would put in place of accreditation as a means of assuring federal policy makers about the academic quality of institutions that received federal student aid. But, in all likelihood, we would not like it.

The challenge for the higher education community is to preserve what is good about accreditation and respond to the criticisms that have been leveled against it. It is a tall order, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Accreditation is an effective tool for strengthening an institution, but its effectiveness depends on college and university leaders. It is incumbent on presidents and chancellors to take ownership of this proven oversight mechanism, explain it to members of Congress and the administration, and demonstrate, as Congressman McKeon noted in his remarks at the October 2002 hearing, that accreditation is synonymous with high-quality education. If we do not, we will face the real possibility that the federal government may address these concerns without us.

BY TERRY HARTLE

TERRY HARTLE is Senior Vice President at the American Council on Education.

Copyright American Council on Education Winter 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved