Saturday
September 6, 2008
Advertisement
Advertisement
News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
March 27, 2007
Pushback Against Perceived Power Grab
College basketball connoisseurs of a certain vintage — especially fans of the old University of North Carolina teams — might have appreciated the tactics that some college officials and accreditors engaged in as a federal panel reconvened Monday to negotiate possible changes in U.S. regulations governing accrediting. The Tar Heel squads of the 1960s and ’70s, whenever they got a lead late in the game, would spread their players across the offensive end of the floor and essentially play “keep away” from their opponents, wiping time off the clock (this was before the shot clock limited the amount of time a team could hold the ball). The stalling tactic, known as the four corners offense, frustrated the opponents and bored the fans to tears, but it worked.
Related stories
- Studying Transfer of Credit, Take 2, Aug. 22
- Unintended Consequences of State Merit-Based Aid, May 29
- Content Control — This Time From Friends, March 6
- Altering Accreditation — But How?, Sept. 24, 2007
- Don’t Forget the Registrar, Jan. 30, 2007
On Monday, representatives of regional and professional accrediting agencies and some college officials engaged in their own form of the four corners, repeatedly interrupting the negotiating session by calling for closed-door “caucuses” in which they discussed strategies, possible changes in regulatory language, and the like. In the end, little formally got accomplished at the session — by day’s end, the group hadn’t even polished off its debate over the written summary of the group’s first meeting, in February, to which most of the negotiators objected.
There’s one big difference between what the old Tar Heels did and the tactic of the higher education officials: Basketball teams used the four corners when they were winning. The accrediting negotiators were stalling in the hope that they can come up with some kind of strategy to fight off a set of proposals that they argue will dramatically expand the federal government’s involvement in their day to day operations.
The U.S. Education Department sent its recommendations for changing federal accrediting rules around to the negotiators late last week, several days past the department’s self-imposed deadline for providing the information. Its officials had promised to get the material to negotiators at least seven days before the negotiating panel reconvened Monday — but it arrived only late Thursday, as many of the negotiators were in Washington for Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’s summit on higher education.
(It is a sign of the mistrust that has developed between the department and many college officials that it is widely assumed that department officials withheld the accreditation proposals until the summit was essentially over, because they feared that the aggressive nature of the proposals would probably blow up the surprisingly cooperative spirit of the summit. Vickie L. Schray, the department official who is leading the negotiating session, steadfastly denied that suggestion Monday.)
When the proposed rule making language did appear, though, it contained several provisions that would, if etched into federal regulation, give the Education Department significantly greater authority in monitoring accreditors, and give accrediting agencies much more say over the institutions they accredit.
Among other changes, the department’s proposed regulatory language would:
- Give accreditors three options for measuring institutions’ success in educating students — two of which would force them to set minimal levels of acceptable performance, which regional accreditors (and many college officials) have traditionally considered it inappropriate for them to do.
- Require accrediting agencies to bar the colleges they monitor from basing decisions about whether to accept a transfer student’s academic credits on the accreditation status of the “sending” institution, and significantly increase the amount and types of information that accrediting groups would have to make public.
- Force accrediting agencies to collect and analyze more regularly than they are required to do now “information on key performance indicators, such as enrollments, financial audits, retention and completion rates, and other measures of student achievement identified by the agency,” and to justify to the education secretary the frequency with which they collect that information.
- Give the Education Department’s staff significantly more power to monitor accrediting agencies, including the power to “conduct an investigation” into an accrediting agency “at any time, on its own initiative, at the request of the [National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity], or in response to a third party complaint.”
- Require accrediting bodies to require the programs, colleges and universities they oversee to “publish information related to the program’s or institution’s effectiveness in fulfilling program objectives and institutional mission, especially indicators of the program’s or institution’s performance regarding student outcomes.” And accreditors themselves, the department adds, must publish information about the standards to which they hold colleges accountable, and that information “must explicitly describe the agency’s expectation of performance in relation to each standard.”
Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said that department officials’ proposed policies, taken together, “would enable them to federally regulate academic policy through accreditation.” He added: “This is an unfounded assertion of authority that is breathtaking in its daring, coming, as it does, from an administration that is entirely bereft of credibility on higher education…. The secretary apparently believes that she can unilaterally control accreditation — and by implication, academic policies of institutions — both procedurally and substantively.”
Most of the accreditors and other officials who are participating directly in the negotiating session were much more guarded in their comments about their concerns about the department’s proposed language.
That’s partly because some of them — especially officials from the national accrediting bodies, which monitor for-profit colleges — have been held for a decade and a half to standards very similar to those the department is now proposing for all agencies and institutions.
It is also, though, because the purpose of the rule making session is to try to work together – federal and non-federal negotiators alike – to come to agreement, and the participants want to be seen as operating in good faith. The way the process works, if the negotiators don’t reach agreement on regulatory language by the end of three three-day negotiating sessions (today was the first day of the second session – the third and last one is next month), the Education Department can basically make whatever changes in federal rules that it wants — unless Congress tries to rein the department in, that is.
So college officials and accreditors who oppose the department’s initial language have some hope that they can craft a strategy in which federal officials will either settle for softer or gentler language or will (perhaps pushed by members of Congress, many of whom have expressed discomfort with the department’s aggressive stance on accreditation) abandon some of the approaches that college leaders see as most invasive.
In the meantime, though, they stalled by repeatedly requesting closed-door meetings that excluded the federal negotiators (and the public), resulting in a long day that was as interesting as watching paint dry (not to whine).
The most significant proposals – those that would require the accrediting agencies to set minimum standards for the performance of the colleges they review on student achievement, and demand that accreditors ensure that colleges do not make decisions on credit transfer based on the accrediting status of the student’s original institution – are set to be taken up on Tuesday.
A report on what happens then will appear in this space Wednesday.
Want it on paper? Print this page.
Know someone who’d be interested? Forward this story.
Want to stay informed? Sign up for free daily news e-mail.
Advertisement
Comments
Is this supposed to mean we should be surprised?
There are no surprises here; that said, I would not be surprised if the Department of Education stepped back a bit, given that Congress has been challenging the White House’s use of executive privilege.
Nevertheless, I must repeat an oft-mentioned concern that establishing performance benchmarks using standardized tests, such as the National Survey of Student Engagement, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, GRE tests, etc., is problematic, as their results often rely on response rates and other exogenous factors. And given that the questions on these tests cannot be guaranteed to “match” with every institution’s institutional mission, I must wonder how this information will be useful.
I am still hopeful that the U.S. Department of Education will enable institutions to use their own assessments—many of us have worked very hard to include faculty in the assessment process, and this article implies that faculty will not. What about qualitative assessment techniques? Standardized tests—with their percentile scores, scaled scores, etc.—have little specific information about what needs to be done to improve student performance—but allowing institutions to use these techniques, in my opinion, enable faculty to be part of the process.
I am also hopeful that we can have these conversations about using locally developed assessment to ensure buy-in and accountability. However, I am not so hopeful that this is the direction toward which we will be heading.
Sean McKitrick, Assistant Provost for Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment at Binghamton University, at 8:45 am EDT on March 27, 2007
So True....So True
If yesterday was a strong indicator of pushback on behalf of the non-federal negotiators, wait until today as they will discuss “Quantitative sandards for programs leading to gainful employment and Institutional sucess with respect to student achievement.”
One of the more interesting components of the upcoming discussion relates to “Direct Assessment Programs.” The Department, in its draft regulations states that, “Direct assessment of student learning means a measure by the institution of what a student knows and can do in terms of the body of knowledge making up the education program. Examples of direct measures includes projects, papers, examinations, presentations, performances, and portfolios.”
The Student Affairs Profession, by nature, has continuously advocated for this means of assessment of student learning. The examination of knowledge and skills must be measured in various ways, just as instruction in the classroom can no longer be solely “lecture". We must ensure that we are able to provide our students various ways of displaying what it is they have learned and are able to do.
As American colleges and universities continue to examine ways of providing unique measures of student learning we must keep in mind that not all students are alike, and not all learn in the same way. By providing direct assessment programs, rather than just the traditional pen and paper examination, we can provide the impetus for continuous student growth and development.
Daryl, at 9:05 am EDT on March 27, 2007
It’s all about checks and balances, folks. Accreditation agencies need them, and so does the Department of Education. No one entity should be permitted to oversee colleges because if that happens, the students are inevitably left without recourse. Maybe if the big-wigs kept the students in mind, they would get over their power plays and reach a consensus that actually worked.
kgotthardt, at 9:10 am EDT on March 27, 2007
Learning from the Europeans
45 countries on the European continent have been in the process of reconstructing their higher education systems since 1999, so that they all do things the same way (well, nearly the same way) in the matter of credits, degree cycles, qualification frameworks for degrees, and evidence of what students do to earn those degrees. Known as the Bologna Process, it is the largest reconstruction of higher education ever undertaken, and one studiously ignored by the Spellings Commission, the Department of Education, and virtually everyone involved in this debate. It has been as if we have nothing to learn from anybody outside our borders. The current tawdry nonsense of our own “negotiations” would have benefited so much simply by opening our minds and vision—as people who are supposedly in the education business are supposed to do. You can be sure that the Europeans aren’t counting on standardized tests with samples of students, accompanied by statistical gymnastics, to demonstrate that something happened to somebody in the course of higher education. What they are using (which I think we can do better) might surprise you, but you won’t hear that discussion—-or see any evidence of the homework that is necessary to engage in that discussion—-in the current antagonistic environment here. For a piece of what I’ve learned, see the article, “What’s in Your Valise?” in the current issue of Connection, the quarterly of the New England Board of Higher Education.
Clifford Adelman, Senior Associate at Institute for Higher Education Policy, at 9:45 am EDT on March 27, 2007
Thinking Outside the Box
There is one answer to the DOE’s intrusions. Do not respond. If institutions of higher learning were to protest by refusing to cooperate, the Department, and the current administration could be neutralized on these divisive issues. Protest isn’t a simplistic, pat response to difficult questions. On the other hand, it has been an extremely effective tool in the past.
John, at 10:15 am EDT on March 27, 2007
What happened?
Since the inception of the Department of Education during the Carter administration, republicans have avoided direct involvement in higher education. Education in general is a state right, state controlled. Reagan’s response to the DoEd was very hands off. So was Senior’s. Suddenly during this administration, micromanagement of education at all levels has become common place. No Child Left Behind and now Federal attempts to regulate higher education.
I’m not saying that universities shouldn’t be held accountable to do a thorough analysis of what they do and how well they do it, but micromanagement on the part of the DoEd is not the answer either.
I’ve worked with the NSSE and I don’t particularly feel that it is the magic bullet, any more than the SAT and ACT measure the skills developed in high schools across the country for all populations. And use of the dread Student Learning Outcomes that Spelling seems to favor to the exclusion of other measures is simply too narrow a method, basically crippling the goals and objectives of a number of student services, by forcing them to push their assessment activities into cookie cutter measures of institutional success or Student Learning Outcomes that are obtuse and impossible to measure. We need a broader, more inclusive method of assessing higher education, but the leadership behind this movement isn’t getting us there.
Sarah, at 10:31 am EDT on March 27, 2007
By all means!!
Please don’t respond to these intrusions by US DOE! Let’s end the Title IV system all together and eliminate third-party payments for tuition. More research demonstrates a direct correlation between Pell increases and tuition increases...students are insulated from the real cost of higher education becaause so few of the pay it. By all means let’s end this sham.
Tod, at 11:06 am EDT on March 27, 2007
Don’t worry, be happy
Rather than not respond as one of the commentators suggests, we should respond with more than what is requested. Take initiatives and provide the results to allow the government to adopt the best of our ideas.
We are in the education business. Many of us teach administration and sales. It is our job to sell the government and the public that we do a good job. Not to be obstreperous. We must be proud of our end product, the educated student.
The government means well, we should help it fulfill its mission – make its mission run parallel to ours.
Do only the moaners submit comments to this site or can it be used to communicate ideas. Must we be in perpetual meetings or can we use the internet to free up our time to focus on what we were hired to do?
William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 1:31 pm EDT on March 27, 2007
Who do we blame?
I recall issuing a decade of warnings, beginning with a 1992 editorial, of the perils of failing to integrate real assessment of student achievement with the regional’s’ otherwise backslapping processes. Likewise, we warned the regionals that the Feds were serious about dragging higher education into the marketplace. We would have written requirements virtually identical to the Feds three options below but would have preferred that the responsibility be diffused to the lowest rather than the highest functional levels of the higher education’s social fabric. Very little will change for the better so long as universities permit instructors to serve themselves with minimal accountability by exercising control over business functions for which they generally lack demonstrated competence (e.g., content development, pedagogical design, precision learning, finance & budgeting, institutional management & leadership). Pilots are required to demonstrate their intellectual and behavioral competence to federal examiners every 6 to 24 months and are grounded if they fail. College instructors can navigate an entire career, never once having to prove that they can teach to minimal standards appropriate under the findings and generalizations of modern instructional and learning sciences. The shameful truth is that many college instructors still teach under century old pedagogical assumptions, and behave as if there were no science of learning. Its the only professional body I can think of that generally believes that it needs no guidance or in-service training in improving what it does for a living. (Mandarin faculty: please don’t bore us with your brilliant analysis of the differences between flying and teaching.)So, who do we blame for this impending further loss of control? The Feds, for getting sick and tired of getting sick and tired of vacuous claims of apodictic quality? The Regionals, for dithering endlessly while failing to make their case to member institutions? (Even AQIP quickly shed its commitment to genuine CQI by dropping real requirements for evidence.) University administrators, for failing to gain control over their production function? Those who teach, for continuing to take two helpings at the front of a long serving line?
Take your pick. I’ll start with college administrators of whom I know many. All of them seem to know better.
Robert Tucker, President at InterEd, Inc., at 1:31 pm EDT on March 27, 2007
Another idea
Students go to colleges and expecting employment after graduating from schools. This is the value colleges should talk about. I understand that college provide other benefits but we can’t be ignorance about the substance.
The value is, therefore, determined by industries. If there is going to be a evaluation of the graduates, it should be guided by companies but not institutions. This is the value that students and parents can care about. As long as these result are published, institutions are free to do what ever they want to do and market dynamic will kick in and regulated it.
Institutions can still teach whatever they think is valuable to students and some of them will be proved valuable by industries and implemented in the test. However, self-declared value will be valued.
Duncan, at 2:34 pm EDT on March 27, 2007
Duncan,
I would agree that (most) students go to college to prepare for employment. I would argue that part of a college/university’s job is to expand those horizons, but let’s focus on that outcome. What does it mean? Are we preparing them for the first job?—fora career?—for a lifetime in which they will likely change careers multiple times? If it is the latter (and if it is not, we are really shortchanging them), what are the learning outcomes we should seek? Surely they must address more than today’s “state-of-the-art” software, or accounting procedures, or laboratory protocols, all of which may well be out of date before they graduate.
Craig Monroe
Craig Monroe, at 6:05 am EDT on March 28, 2007
RE:Another idea
Craig,
I understand know what your concerns are. I agree that industries are, in general, quite short-sighted. Personally, I were changing jobs from field to field and it’s always hard to find my first employer in each new field. Trust me, I understand the importance of being a life-long learner.
However, the approach I proposed does not necessarily take the broadness out of the equation. Let’s assume that people with broaden skill set do have their edges. This means that they will rise in corporation and will value the broadness and will drive the change of the evaluation. To be optimistic, I am sure, even if we implemented it today, there will be people from the industries that request broadness be included in the evaluation.
There are, of cause, a lot of other implications with this approach. But all can be discussed.
Duncan, at 8:50 am EDT on March 28, 2007
Duncan,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m glad you raised the dreaded phrase “life-long-learner” because that may be the most critical set of perspectives and skills students need to learn. The problem is that discussion of the concept in fora such as this is usually pretty “spongy"—soft, flexible, and devoid of rigor. It is also my guess that the DOE would recoil at that phrase. There is no question that higher education needs to get its act together on assessment and that application of learning to the external world (including the world of work) is an important piece of that. I just don’t think this approach is likely toyield an assessment process that fits the bill.
Craig
Craig Monroe, at 12:26 pm EDT on March 28, 2007
Advertisement
Jobs Related to Pushback Against Perceived Power Grab
or search for jobs directly.
Transfusion Medicine Faculty
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
The University of Minnesota is a premier employer and a talent magnet attracting leading faculty and staff from around the ... see job
WEB CONTENT SPECIALIST — Undergraduate Admissions
Tufts University
WEB CONTENT SPECIALIST — Undergraduate Admissions see job
Learning, Neuological & Psych Disabilities
University of California, Riverside
The University of California Riverside invests in your future through employee training and career development, access to ... see job
Development Officer (112092)
Northeastern University
Northeastern University, founded in 1898 and located in Boston, is a private research university that is a leader in ... see job
Associate Dean-Graduate Business Programs
American University in Cairo
Founded in 1919, AUC’s campus is currently located in Cairo, Egypt, but will be moving to a new, state-of-the-art campus in ... see job
Electrical Engineering Faculty
Washington State University, Vancouver
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING FACULTY- Washington State University Vancouver invites applications for its new electrical engineering ... see job
Faculty, Welding/NDTE
Lone Star College System
Located just north of Houston, Texas, our five campuses serve 1,400 square miles. Our student enrollment is nearly 50,000 in ... see job
Assistant Professor: Community & Human Services — Job ID 929
SUNY — Empire State College
Empire State College’s Northeast Center/Saratoga Springs Unit seeks applications for a full-time, tenure-track faculty ... see job
Director, UVM James M. Jeffords Center
University of Vermont
The University of Vermont
Director, UVM James M. Jeffords Center
Senior VP and Provost Office
... see job
Academic Advisor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center-Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora
Posting Description: This full-time professional exempt position embraces a philosophy of student ... see job
Home
| Sign up | Log in
| About us
| Work for Us
| Press Releases
| Rights and permissions
| Contact us
| Advertise
| Partners
| RSS 
| Podcasts
| Links
| Privacy
| My Account
© Copyright 2008 Inside Higher Ed
Accrediting guilds in full view
In this attempt to refashion the one-hundred year old accrediting guilds, the US DOE faces stiff odds, considering they gave the ball (and the game) away in 1994.
But times have changed, and it doesn’t look like the US DOE squad will repeat its past mistakes.
Accrediting guilds, of course, will fight tooth and nail to retain their privileges that come with self-regulation: members proposing the standards (including faculty qualifications) that they themselves will be regulated by. But as we all know, self-regulation means zero regulation.
What’s different is that the Secretary understands this, understands that standardless-standards of the Riley-era have no force, and do not serve the public.And, the Secretary has acted.
Now, it is up to the accrediting guilds.
Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 8:25 am EDT on March 27, 2007