July 3, 2006

Not All Change Is Improvement

In more than 30 years of involvement in accreditation and postsecondary education, I have rarely seen a body of any kind stimulate so much debate, discussion and review as the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

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Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council of Higher Education Accreditation, suggested in these pages an aggressive response, noting that “actors in the private sector [could] step in and develop new mechanisms to gather information about higher education quality in a more transparent and evidence-based way, sidelining accreditation.”

Eaton makes a strong case for change in the “conduct of the business of our enterprise,” but I believe a great deal of calm and dispassionate debate is in order before recommending change.

First some context. The relationship between government and accrediting agencies is that of partners — wary partners, but partners. (For those who want a little more background on why this is so, please follow this link.) There is a dynamic equilibrium in effect, ensuring that if change is to take place, it will be done responsibly, with careful review, and with the input of the entire postsecondary community.

Viewing the commission’s proposals through that prism, a federal accrediting system that is not of the academy itself, that does not enjoy the confidence of the schools being visited, would quickly reduce to a regulatory system, and a regulatory system will simply not work. Schools are open and frank when talking to colleagues; regulators never learn about limitations and deficiencies that are regularly discussed with accreditors. Federally operated accreditation would be adversarial in nature and would not allow the professional judgment that is so central to higher education. When we take into account the possibility of political input, it is clear that federal accreditation will fail.

A national accrediting system could conceivably work but without the outcomes that have made American higher education the envy of the world and without the successes that bring other nations to study accreditation and to emulate it. Accreditation is not just a paper process. On the one hand, the institutions and programs being accredited play a key role in determining the standards and policies under which they are recognized. At the same time, accreditation agency staff knows much more about schools and programs than appears on reports. There are personal relationships that add immeasurably to an agency’s ability to assess a school and its function. These reasons call for smaller agencies rather than a single national body.

In addition, the multiplicity of accrediting bodies helps create intellectual ferment, diverse approaches, experimentation and the sharing of strategies and techniques and the cross fertilization of ideas that lead to improvement in accreditation. Conferences and papers sponsored by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation are often both stimulus and venue for this healthy interaction which in turn leads to responsible, carefully monitored, and targeted change.

Our thoughtful and reasoned response to the commission should point out that for over two decades, states, accreditors and scholars alike have sought valid indicators of institutional quality, without success. Similarly, those seeking measures of student learning have failed to identify strategies that accomplish this accurately and comprehensively. Suffice it to add that should such valid measures surface, accreditors and schools will enthusiastically adopt them. Note the emphasis on the word valid.

We might also explain that calls for transparency will result in a reluctance of schools to be open and straightforward to accreditors, and influence site visitors to write defensively. We would emphasize the importance of accreditation in establishing a threshold for quality, and in fostering a culture where institutions and programs seek to improve beyond that threshold.

And we would make it clear that in accreditation, improvement does not require structural change, and not all change is improvement.

Bernard Fryshman is executive vice president of the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools’ Accreditation Commission.

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Comments

“Our thoughtful and reasoned response to the commission should point out that for over two decades, states, accreditors and scholars alike have sought valid indicators of institutional quality, without success.”

So it’s true, then, that colleges and universities are not being held responsible for measuring and publicizing valid indicators of institutional quality? If that’s the case, then why are these institutions still accredited? If the fundamental purpose of accreditation is to ensure that an institution does its job (i.e., educate students and provide evidence of their learning), then shouldn’t more institutions have their accreditations pulled?

AC, at 11:10 am EDT on July 3, 2006

Valid measures of quality

Bernard Fryshman is, as usual, one of the more thoughtful commentators on what is happening in higher education. I agree with his view that the government should not become a mega-accreditor, for the reasons he mentions: lack of credibility, political interference and iron-claw regulatory mode.

The question of whether we have any baseline of validity that most academics can agree on is a little different. Dr. Fryshman is accustomed to working with genuine colleges, and good ones. My office is accustomed to working with degree-granters that are either unaccredited or have accreditation from trade-school accreditors. We have found that some national accreditors are so lax in their notions of what is valid that they have allowed people with manifestly fake credentials to lead universities, and have paid little attention to student work expectations.

Although a federal takeover is a horrible idea, some kind of floor on what is really a college-level program needs to be set. At least one state, Texas, has done this by setting up its own system to evaluate accreditors. Some have not met Texas standards. Other states may do the same.

Alan Contreras, Administrator at Oregon Degree Authorization, at 11:20 am EDT on July 3, 2006

valid measures

The rub comes with the notion that learning can be measured legitimately. In many respects, I don’t think it can unless we go to standardized tests, and then while we may have a measure (just look at your local iteraction of NCLB), I don’t know that it would measure anything worthwhile. In the NW, there is as much a push for measurable outcomes as there is anywhere I’m sure, but it seems the fundamental presmise that one’s knowledge and learning CAN be measured is not often part of the discussion. Assessment belongs in the classroom, and, as I’ve said before, it (in the form of grading) is an already dubious enterprise. Yes, I can make up a test and students can pass or fail it, and it may address my institution’s learning outcomes for a course, but is that learning? If a student can tell me who wrote what and why it has value, but they can’t apply it to their life, have they learned anything worthwhile? Has tgheir life been enhanced in any way? And should that “outcome” be immediate or is it okay if it comes to them in ten years? Whose fault would it be if they didn’t? Mine as the teacher? Their’s as the learner/student? The curriculum’s fault? How accountable should the institution (I’m at an open enrollment CC) be for the student who fails for a variety of reasons (I had one drop a class to enter drug treatment—I’d say he learned something wholly unrelated to my class that won’t get measured, and he’s better off for it if he stays clean, but as for how he’d be measured, likely as a failure).

Frankly, I’d be loathe to have to use anything from Texas for a national model. A national accredidation agency will further ensconce the place of business and the competetive marketplace in higher educaiton 9goold old neoliberalism), and the roll of the marketplace as a good thing for higher education, or any education, is a premise whose validity has yet to be proven as worthwhile, never mind valid. Business and government have too much sway already in the way accredidation influences what happens. I’m not an expert on cars just because I drive one, nor an expert on dentistry though I see a dentist at least twice a year. I say we prepare people to be productive citizens and business can prepare them to be productive employees and let’s keep the feds out of it as much as possible.

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 1:05 pm EDT on July 3, 2006

Role of the States

Alan Contreras makes a point that seems to be continually lost in the debate over accreditation: the primary authority for determining if an institution may operate at all is that of the state within which the school is located. Under our federal system, it is the states that primarily control education, with Federal influence coming into play through the availability of money — in the case of higher ed, a lot of it (although much less than the states provide, if one counts the subsidies for public institutions). A school that is not authorized by the state where it lives cannot do anything, let alone receive Federal funds. (Online institutions raise a separate, and very interesting question about where an institution is located, but that is for another blog.)

While accreditation may be a key ingredient to participation in the Federal student aid programs, each state has an absolute right to set standards for allowing an an institution to exist at all: to offer instruction and grant any kind of credential. And each state can set up any kind of measures to determine which institutions are worthy of that privilege. Some states, to be sure, do not have very rigorous standards, while others (Texas, as Alan notes; New York and Ohio are other good examples) have requirements that in some respects and for some kinds of institutions make accreditation seem easy. (Of course, as New York has openly admitted, the state oversight process may not always work as well as intended. But that is a matter of practice, not inherent to the process.)

It is the states that have the absolute power. To lay the alleged weaknesses of postsecondary education at the feet of the accreditors — and to use those weaknesses as a wedge to federalize the accreditation process — misses the point that it is not the Federal government that has the primary role in American education. It is the states.

Michael B. Goldstein, Practice Leader, Higher Education at Dow Lohnes, at 9:05 pm EDT on July 3, 2006

Bradley Bleck writes: “...the roll[sic] of the marketplace as a good thing for higher education, or any education, is a premise whose validity has yet to be proven as worthwhile, never mind valid.”

I would argue that marekt competition has always been the primary mover of higher education in this country. Since the founding of Harvard in 1636, institutions have proliferated because there’s a market for them. The lack of federal regulation during higher education’s boom in the 19th and 20th centuries is evidence enough that institutions were competing in the marketplace for faculty and students. If there was a market for X type of studies, and the Ivy Leagues couldn’t provide it (e.g., the Yale curriculum debate), then new institutions who did offer X studies were created and, by all accounts, did very well.

Beyond the altruistic missions of educating citizens, higher education institutions have and will continue to operate like businesses. And regardless of people’s views on measuring learning, the bottom line is whether institutions are producing the kind of individuals they espouse to produce. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that the surgeon who will operate on you actually learned something in school?

AC, at 8:40 am EDT on July 5, 2006

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Valid measures of quality

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