Accreditation as seen from within a chamber—of commerce

An article in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed—"Altering Accreditation — But How?"—casts some light on the rhetoric that the SOCCCD Board Majority has spouted against our own accrediting agency (the ACCJC):

…Although the topic was far from front and center in the commission’s report, the Education Department has put changes in accreditation at the fulcrum of its campaign to force higher education institutions to be more accountable to the public. The department has turned up the heat on accrediting agencies in the department’s process for recognizing and approving accreditors, and unsuccessfully sought new federal rules aimed at forcing the agencies to collect and report significantly expanded information on how well colleges they oversee educate students, the latter effort largely stymied by Congress to date.

Anyone who has been perplexed about the Bush administration’s reasons for using accreditation as a tool to achieve its larger goals in higher education may have found some answers Friday at a session sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington. The half-day event, “Higher Education Accreditation: Evaluating the System and Possible Alternatives,” was not exactly an even-handed review of the accreditation system: The nine participants were heavily tilted toward critics who have spoken or written of accreditation’s flaws, with a lone speaker, Judith S. Eaton of the Council on Higher Education Accreditation, who could be seen as representing the views of accreditors, though she herself is not one.

Four of the speakers were closely tied to the [Ed. Secretary] Spellings Commission, including its chairman, Charles Miller, who, freed from whatever constraints he felt while leading the federal panel, made clear a disdain for accreditation that had been muted in the panel’s final report. Miller…gave a keynote address in which he described accrediting agencies as self-regulatory bodies that are “fundamentally and inherently biased” toward the colleges they supposedly judge, operate in secret, and “lack true oversight or public accountability.” The accreditation system holds colleges to outmoded definitions of quality that discourage experimentation by traditional institutions and make it difficult for colleges with new instructional or business models to develop.

“Accredition is the primary barrier to innovation in American higher education,” Miller said. “Accreditation is the biggest barrier to real competition. Accreditation is the biggest barrier to real change.”

Arthur J. Rothkopf, another Spellings Commission alumnus who was president of Lafayette College and is now a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was one of several panelists who characterized the system of regional accreditation as a way for traditional colleges and universities to shield themselves from making necessary changes….
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But while she was thrust into the role as the lone defender of higher education and accreditation at the AEI’s stacked session, [Judith S.] Eaton conceded nonetheless that significant change was necessary from within.

“Higher education itself needs to be realistic,” Eaton said. “There is a low level of trust in social institutions ... and there are continuing demands for greatly enhanced accountability and transparency. Higher education is going to remain essential and it’s likely to remain expensive, and that’s going to continue to drive consumer-like behavior and scrutiny about our enterprise. Accreditors need to continue to work on accountability ... and we need it sooner rather than later.”
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Jeff Sandefer, an investor who has helped to found an independent M.B.A. program in entrepreneurship, predicted that the “monopoly of regional accreditation is sure to crumble like the Berlin Wall” as college spending and prices continue to rise and students realize that they can get a higher quality and more cost-effective education at institutions that operate outside the traditional higher education structure….

ALSO in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

● The American Association of University Professors has issued an open letter to university leaders urging them not to cancel controversial speakers scheduled on their campus. The letter, based on AAUP policy defending such speakers, is designed to strengthen the resolve of administrators as the 2008 election season approaches and political campaigns will likely be looking at who is and isn’t speaking on campus.

● Competing bills to deal with student complaints about textbook prices have arrived on the governor’s desk in California, the Los Angeles Times reported. Both bills would require more disclosure about changes made from one edition to another, but one bill (backed by student groups) would require more than the other (backed by publishers).