The public and some policy makers have a long list of expectations for accreditation these days. They want it to serve as a stamp of financial stability; a fire wall against fraud and abuse; a barometer of basic academic performance; and a tool for parents and prospective students to compare the value of different colleges.
The problem is that accreditation doesn’t represent any of those things, yet.
Accreditation doesn’t accomplish most of the things people outside academe would like it to accomplish because it was designed by and for the relatively small group of people who understand the complexities of American higher education. But as the costs of college tuition keep rising, so do the demands for accreditation, which serves as a ticket for more than $175-billion in federal student aid.
Several groups are now considering ways to overhaul accreditation. A federal panel that advises the secretary of education on accreditation is considering a recommendation to remove accreditation as a condition of receiving federal student aid, eliminating accreditors’ greatest leverage over the institutions.
Spurred by public demands for accountability, fears of losing relevancy, and even threats of more federal regulation, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the nation’s six regional accreditors, has approved major reforms of its process. These include measures to make some accreditation reports public and to require some basic benchmarks for academic performance.
Accreditation needs to be more responsive both to the public’s demands for more accountability as well as to the technological innovations transforming higher education, says Ralph A. Wolff, president of the western association.
“The times have changed. People need to know more,” he said.
In the Hot Seat
The calls for change come with mounting evidence that most accrediting bodies are ill-equipped to monitor the fast-growing for-profit colleges that have scores of small campuses across the country and tens of thousands of students taking online courses. While accreditors are adapting their academic standards to both nonprofit and proprietary institutions, the aggressive, and sometimes questionable, business practices of some companies have put accrediting bodies in the hot seat on Capitol Hill.
Congressional Democrats have blamed accreditors for not cracking down on purported recruiting and enrollment fraud. However, a Chronicle investigation has found that some institutions even manipulate job-placement data to satisfy accreditors.
As they often point out, accrediting organizations rely on a volunteer corps of peer reviewers and do not have the legal authority to conduct actual investigations. But the groups have been tainted with some scandals because their approval is a requirement for receiving federal student aid. In addition, many of the for-profit colleges promote their accreditation status as a stamp of legitimacy.
Even when dealing with traditional public or private colleges, accreditors have been inconsistent, at best, at rooting out or publicizing fiscal problems. Financial distress is one of the more common reasons for an institution to lose its accreditation, but the process can be lengthy, allowing struggling colleges to languish for years with little apparent action or oversight from accreditors.
While many of accreditation’s harshest critics have come from outside academe, even some insiders now contend that the problems are systemic, that accreditation is too insular, obsessed with process and overwhelmed by regulatory demands.
“I certainly agree with those observers who believe that our current practices in accreditation are so abstract, so subjective, so procedural and so self-referential as to border on being substantively meaningless in assuring institutional quality or integrity,” Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, told a federal panel that advises Education Secretary Arne Duncan on accreditation issues. That panel, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, is one of several groups considering widespread reforms to make accreditation more open and effective.
The 18-member panel also advises on whether an accrediting agency should be approved by the Education Department. A college must be approved by a federally recognized accreditor in order to receive federal financial aid.
At the root of these problems is an inherent conflict of interest, Mr. Nassirian says, because the accrediting agencies are governed by people who represent the very institutions that are being accredited.
Supporters of accreditation argue that the expectations of the public and elected officials are out of step with the traditional role of accreditors but acknowledge the need for change.
Accreditation is not broken, Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, told the federal advisory committee in June. Historically, accreditation has been accountable to its institutions, she said, and the standards are “aspirational” rather than “explicit"—meaning that the standards can be considered goals that institutions must strive for rather than basic minimums that all colleges would meet.
Public sentiment, however, is for accreditation to be a stronger advocate for consumers, Ms. Eaton said in her written remarks to the panel. That could happen if institutions agreed to report more information about graduation rates and job placements, for example, in a way that makes it possible to compare colleges, she wrote.
Reforms Coming
At least one regional accreditor is making such changes. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities, is proposing several unusual measures, like requiring institutions to set benchmarks for student retention and completion rates, making more of its communications with colleges public, and developing a more rigorous process of financial and policy review for proprietary institutions. The commission’s governing board approved the changes early this month.
Mr. Wolff, president of the association, said in written remarks to the federal advisory committee that some of the proposals are, “in some cases, untested, and even controversial,” and are meant in part to delay more federal regulation of the accreditation process.
Improving public communication and openness are also the likely recommendations that will come from a 25-member task force of higher-education leaders convened by the American Council on Education, said Peter T. Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.
The furthest-reaching proposals, however, are being considered by the federal advisory committee, whose recommendations will be forwarded to the Secretary Duncan as possible measures to be included when the Higher Education Act comes up for reauthorization in 2013.
The committee’s draft report weighs the possibility that accreditation would no longer be required as a condition of eligibility for federal student aid. The advantage of that, the report says, is that it would remove all federal intrusion into the accreditation process, leaving accreditors free to determine the best way to manage their processes.
The downside, however, is that without the threat of losing access to federal aid, accreditors will have little or no power to enforce their standards, and colleges will then have no incentive to let accreditors scrutinize their operations.
That is a possibility that even some of accreditation’s critics want to avoid. If it’s not accreditors who are determining eligibility for financial aid, “whose call is it going to be”? Mr. Nassirian asks.
“I’m very worried that we could end up with a bunch of bureaucrats,” he says.
