This policy paper is intended as a primer for policymakers on lessons learned from decades of experience with the federal system of higher education accreditation. It streamlines, updates, and expands ACTA’s 2002 investigation, Can College Accreditation Live Up to Its Promise? At that time we found that accreditation did not ensure quality, was not protecting the curriculum from serious degradation, and was giving students, parents, and public decision-makers almost no useful information about institutions of higher education. Recounting recent stories from the “front lines,” our new investigation finds that things have only become worse. Congress rightly wants to ensure that federal student aid funds do not go to “fly by night” operations. But there are other and better ways to achieve that result, and they are outlined in this publication.
Gwenda Kaczor for The Chronicle Overhauling higher-education accreditation could be on the agenda for conservative lawmakers and policy mavens now that Donald J. Trump has been re-elected president.
Tremors from the election continue to ripple across the country, and the meltdown among the Democrats rages on. What is undeniable is that there is a real opportunity to make some much-needed reforms now.
The federal government’s system for accrediting colleges is a misguided failure that should be largely replaced with a simpler method that relies on key institutional data about cost and quality, a trustees group is arguing. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative-leaning lobbying association led by Anne D. Neal, proposed in a report […]
A forum on accreditation Friday in Washington, D.C., drew calls for changes in the current system as well as a need to focus on larger issues such as college affordability for low-income students and more accountability for institutions. Arthur Rothkopf, former Lafayette College president and a member of the secretary of education’s Commission on the […]
In the year since Education Secretary Margaret Spellings formally embraced the work of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education and began her efforts to carry out its work, no topic has been more at the forefront than the system of regional and national accreditation that higher education, the government and states use to […]
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