September 2007

Higher Education Accreditation: Evaluating the System and Possible Alternatives

Proposals for reforming the higher education accreditation system have ignited a firestorm of controversy this year. While Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and the recent Commission on the Future of Higher Education have both recommended changes to the current accreditation process, others in the higher education community feel that the changes go too far and could negatively impact accreditation as a whole.
 
This event featured a keynote address by Charles Miller, chairman of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (also known as the Spellings Commission), who talked about the group's recommendations and the need for reform. In the first panel, Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; Sara Martinez Tucker, under secretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education, who is also a Spellings Commission member; and Arthur Rothkopf, former president of Lafayette College and a current senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, discussed the current state of the accreditation system and whether it really needs to be changed. AEI's Richard Vedder, who was also a member of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, moderated.
 
In the second panel, Indiana University law professor William Henderson, who has conducted research on law school rankings and on the data used to accredit law schools; Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Jeff Sandefer, a higher education entrepreneur and the founder of the Acton MBA, reviewed and discussed possible substitutes for the existing process. Candace de Russy, a former trustee for the State University of New York, moderated. 

Panel I: The College Accreditation System: An Assessment

Judith Eaton
Council on Higher Education Accreditation

The critics of accreditation call for government to regulate accreditation through standardization. Student achievement would be the centerpiece of quality and a system of comparability would be implemented. The critics are also looking for a transparent system that is readily available to the public. These methods would lead the system away from the collegiate and toward the regulatory. The advocates are seeking change through the current institution by evaluating quality through institutional purpose. They would like to see more transparency—but within limits, so as not to disrupt the ability of accreditation to handle difficult issues. They are seeking comparability without standardization, potentially implementing consumer reports.

Who decides quality? For the last fifty years, the government has determined quality through the public-private partnership. For this partnership to work higher education needs to reestablish the drive for quality and the government needs to reaffirm education's responsibility to that quality. There also has to be a level of realism about the current climate. Low levels of trust and the government's involvement in social issues are going to create an increased demand for transparency, and the increasing cost of higher education will force the sector into more consumer-friendly behavior.

Sara Martinez Tucker
U.S. Department of Education
Spellings Commission

The United States has the highest college dropout rate among leading developed countries, and it ranks tenth in the percentage of individuals between twenty-five and thirty-four who hold a baccalaureate degree. Aid has tripled since the 1990s, but enrollment and attainment rates are flat. When the 117 percent increase in tuition is taken into account, the increase in aid is nullified due to a mere 50 percent increase in family income. This means that to pay a child's tuition bill, the average family must spend one-quarter to one-third of their annual income.

There have been accusations that the Department of Education wants to federalize education or implement a one-size-fits-all system. The government is not leaning in this direction. The purpose of accreditation is for the institution to make goals based on their mission. The accreditor makes sure that institution has useful goals and that it is achieving them.

There are many cases in which students attempt to enter postsecondary institutions for the first time and are denied access due to the accreditation organization aligned with their previous institution. This system needs to change. We cannot tell the American public that higher education is worth its monetary value if that education is not accepted by businesses.

Arthur Rothkopf
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Lafayette College

Transparency is the main issue behind the changes that need to occur in the accreditation system. Once a higher education institution is evaluated, the scores should be accessible to the public. If any business attempted to keep their reviews secret, it would not be tolerated. The same standards should apply to higher education institutions.

Once a school is accredited, it is very rare that that status is taken away. If the accreditation of an institution is challenged, Congress is enlisted and the problem disappears. Similar enforcement issues occur with the actual accreditation evaluation, such as "selected topic" evaluations in which the president of the institution can pick three components of the institution that he would like evaluated. Thus, institutions abuse the privilege and have incentives to increase the size of the library or create a better study abroad program, rather than having the accreditation agency look at how the school is running or the quality of teaching.

Institutions should not be against testing to evaluate the quality of education being received. Every institution requires a test for entry, whether it is the SAT or ACT for undergraduates or the LSAT or MCAT for grad students. Even without tests, accreditation should focus on an output result, such as tracking how many students apply to postgraduate programs versus how many are actually accepted.

Panel II: Alternatives to Traditional Accreditation

Anne D. Neal
American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Accreditation was originally implemented as a voluntary control system. It became a federal requirement when the government began to withhold federal aid unaccredited institutions. Accreditation has resulted in lower quality, increased costs, and decreased accountability. The current system is flawed in its structure, secrecy, low standards, and lack of interest in outputs.

The solution to the problem is to decouple financial aid and accreditation. The certification process that an institution must go through to be able to operate, regardless of federal aid, should be enough to decipher whether or not they are a diploma mill. Furthermore, institutions have to go through yearly audits with this program and must renew their certification every one to six years. If the government is worried about diploma mills, both the state and federal governments can sue the organizations for fraud.

Accreditation is a regional monopoly that promotes cartel behavior. There is no reason for the national education system to be split into regions. If disposing of accreditation is not currently an option, we can at least open the doors for alternative forms of it, which will offer competition and the opportunity for institutions to opt out of accreditation as long as they furnish learning output and cost statistics.

Jeff Sandefer
The Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship

Economics will always trump politics in a free society, and competition will eventually destroy bureaucracy. This phenomenon will lead to the decrease in power of accreditation agencies. The original reason for accreditation was to avoid fraud and diploma mills, but through technology innovations this problem has practically disappeared. The true fraud that we see today is the selling of prestige, rather than education, at traditional education institutions. This prestige will not sell for much longer as nontraditional colleges, such as the University of Phoenix, continue to offer a cheaper education improving quickly.

As traditional college tuition increases, the government subsidies provided will no longer be sufficient to allure students to forgo cheaper opportunities. As the market takes over, accreditation will begin to lose its monopoly, changing the system by increasing consumer information.

The question of who decides quality was asked in the last panel. Students and parents are the ones who decide quality. Student control is the best potential change for the education system. Students should make contracts with the institution. If the contracts are not fulfilled, the institution can be sued for fraud. Student control would ensure a more satisfying education, potentially at reduced costs.

William Henderson
Indiana University Law School

If accreditation offers clear measurements of outputs, then there would be no issues to be solved by the market. Accreditation is supposed to be a quality assurance program, allowing the public to decide what institutions best provide cost-effective and high-quality education. The inputs provided are built on the theory that goods produce outcomes, but those outcomes are not publicized. The outcomes available for law school are in the range of employment (which is not thorough enough) and bar exam passage (a poor metric due to variations from state to state).

Law students are disadvantaged due to increasing amounts of debt owed upon completion of a degree, which averaged about $80,000  in 2006. This debt determines what jobs students are willing to strive for, as the average starting salary in was $135,000 for larger law firms and $62,000 for government or public interest law careers.

Students could avoid this problem if comparative information was available. Some third-tier law schools are graduating students at a rate similar to first-tier schools, meaning that students can get a good legal education without a financial burden. Comparative analysis and the lowering of barriers would also help to improve the system, as new formats could be introduced to replace schools that no longer offer a satisfactory education.

Keynote Address

Charles Miller
Spellings Commission

Accreditation entities are founded, financed, and staffed by education institutions; therefore, they are self-regulatory bodies that are biased by structure, culture, and groupthink. This system lacks public accountability and is prone to inadequate funding. There has been little progress in demanding measurement of outcomes, as institutions continue to claim that these outcomes can not be measured and that institutions should not be ranked.

One of the biggest issues is the transfer of credits. Colleges decide whether or not credits can be transferred based on where and by whom an institution is accredited. This process is a revenue boost, for institutions are more concerned with padding their pockets than with the education of any one individual. The loss of time, money, and energy can be substantial to any student moving laterally within the higher education system.

Innovation is essential to higher education. There must be transparency so that the public can make decisions, instead of the government. Accreditation is the biggest barrier to this innovation. New structures should be put in place, such as a reduced private capital system. Valuable skills should be set at a moderate cost. New innovations are happening in the global economic system, and the higher education system needs follow along.

AEI intern Maria Murphy prepared this summary.