An Education Department committee that oversees accreditation organizations has barred the American Academy for Liberal Education from accrediting new institutions or programs for at least half a year. The move, which must be approved by the department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education before it goes into effect, followed a determination that the small accreditor had been lax in not setting minimum standards for what students must learn at the colleges it accredits.
The action, taken by the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity during a meeting last week, was the strongest of several recent moves the panel has made against other accreditors for the same reason.
Accreditors say they have growing concerns as Education Secretary Margaret Spellings begins doing what she said she would: using the advisory committee to require them to make greater use of measurements of what students learn.
The problem with that, say accreditors and some college groups, is it could signal a shift toward federal standards for what students must learn.
“This notion of bright lines, yardsticks, or external validation — I haven’t heard that before,” said Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an umbrella group representing accreditors. “This is pretty far-reaching.”
As an additional punishment, the committee decided to postpone for six months consideration of the American Academy for Liberal Education’s re-recognition.
The academy accredits eight institutions in the United States — many of them colleges with a “great books” approach — as well as five programs at American institutions and several institutions overseas. Those institutions’ accreditation is unaffected by the punishment.
The committee made the decision on the basis of a review by the Education Department. The department official who presented that review at last week’s hearing suggested that the agency was strengthening its requirements for all accreditors — including the six regional associations that accredit most higher-education institutions in the United States — to give more weight to measures of what students learn.
Bitter Response
Jeffrey D. Wallin, president of the American Academy for Liberal Education, spoke bitterly after the meeting at which his group was penalized. He said the committee was trying, at the Education Department’s behest, to make “an end run around Congress in an attempt to federalize higher education.”
The Education Department’s review of the accreditor listed 13 mostly minor problems. Steve Porcelli, the official who presented the report, said most had recently been resolved.
In an unusual move, however, the committee did not accept the report’s recommendation to re-recognize the academy for five years but instead chose unanimously to show its disapproval by putting off a decision until the committee’s next meeting, in June.
The academy must present a report at that gathering demonstrating that it has moved substantially to comply with department standards on the evaluation of student learning, as well as on two other minor issues involving the training of members of its board and evidence of compliance with its standards that the accreditor requires from colleges it oversees.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 53, Issue 17, Page A31