What Is Accreditation? Why Do We Keep Hearing About It?
If you have even a passing interest in higher education, you’ve likely noticed an uptick in stories lately about a seemingly innocuous topic–accreditation. If you’re not an accreditation insider (don’t feel bad, it’s a small, nerdy club), you might not make it much further than the headlines, because accreditation is a ~whole thing~ with its own vocabulary, culture, and characters. We could (and do) spend hours talking about this, but, for today, we’re giving you the highlights, or what my boss tells me is the “Reader’s Digest” version (why anyone would try to eat books is beyond me).
The story of accreditation.
Once upon a time, in 1800s America, creating a college or university was the cool new thing to do—and it was kind of easy. There was no formal mechanism by which colleges were evaluated and legitimized, meaning that Timmy’s House of Waffles ‘n’ Learnin’ could award master’s degrees, if that’s what Timmy wanted to do. In 1885, a group of educators in New England decided that higher education institutions in their region needed to be accountable to someone, and that the someone should be them (representatives from nearby peer institutions). This idea spread, and, over the next several years, new accreditors (institutional and programmatic) sprang up across the country.
After WWII, an unprecedented number of returning military servicemembers were entering college, using their G.I. Bill benefits to pay for their education. Quickly, members of the federal government (and the constituents that elected them) realized that it could be easy for questionable institutions (Timmy’s House of Waffles ‘n’ Learnin’) to take advantage of federal funding without actually providing students meaningful educations. This led to calls for additional governmental oversight of higher ed. Someone needed to be responsible to make sure that taxpayer dollars were being used appropriately and that servicemembers were receiving quality education—thus, the U.S. Department of Education (ED), was established in 1952.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 was passed (huge surprise, here) in 1965. It did a lot of things, but for the purpose of today’s blog, we’re going to focus on two of them:
It established the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality Integrity (NACIQI [pronounced: Nah-SEE-key]). NACIQI’s job is to make recommendations to the Secretary of Education on whether accrediting agencies should receive recognition.
It made accreditation a requirement for institutions of higher education (IHE) to access federal funding and financial aid. Accrediting agencies already existed and had the structures in place to review IHEs, so the US Department of Education decided to save some tax dollars by not reinventing the wheel. Thus, accrediting agencies became gatekeepers for IHEs wanting to access federal financial aid programs.
Important Note: overseeing IHEs’ access to federal funding was not something that accrediting agencies lobbied for, and was, in fact, outside the scope of what many of them were designed to do—ensure academic quality (not perfection).
The higher education landscape has changed dramatically since 1965 (you might have heard about the Internet; it was a pretty big deal), though the essential principles and functions of accreditation are still the same. This means that accrediting agencies that were formed (some over 100 years ago) to oversee IHEs quality are now navigating situations of immense complexity.
What is accreditation?
In the US, accreditation is a voluntary, peer-review process. Basically, an institute of higher education (IHE) goes to an accrediting agency and says, “We think we’re pretty good at educating students. Here’s all the cool stuff we’re doing that complies with your accreditation standards.” The accrediting agency reviews narratives and evidence of their internal practices, academic programs, recruitment, leadership, curriculum, outcomes, governance, and finances to decide whether they should be accredited. Even after an IHE is accredited, they must prove every five to ten years that they’re still doing a great job (i.e., not scamming students or the public out of millions of taxpayers’ dollars).
Who are the accreditors?
The US Department of Education recognizes institutional accreditors (they evaluate the whole IHE), and programmatic accreditors (they evaluate programs in specific disciplines). Structures vary, but most accreditors have a board or commission that is comprised of peers and public members (remember, at its heart, accreditation is a peer review process). Peers can be higher education administrators, staff faculty, and industry/professional experts. Public members are people who are not affiliated with IHEs but can offer valuable external perspectives and opinions, to avoid siloed or circular thinking.
Why doesn’t the US Department of Education just serve as gatekeepers themselves?
Mostly because there are way too many diverse institutions with varying missions for one entity to oversee. The US Department of Education (ED) oversees the entire country’s educational system (elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and higher education). If they had to review each IHE’s processes, curricula, and governance, they would have to employ tens of thousands of people. Having accrediting agencies review IHEs also means:
Institutions are being reviewed by their peers. Accrediting agencies are made up of staff and volunteers who eat, sleep, and breathe higher ed. They have a passion for academia. They are educators and administrators who understand what it takes to run an effective IHE, and can identify and assess good processes, curricula, and outcomes, while understanding nuances and limitations.
Discipline-specific programs can be assessed by programmatic agencies with subject matter expertise. The average ED employee may not have the subject matter expertise to evaluate a PhD in Violin Concerto Composition, but the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) sure will.
Institutions have skin in the game. If your IHE is accredited by an ED-recognized agency, everyone at your institution is now invested in the process—meaning, it’s in your best interest to encourage other institutions to keep their standards high. Example: I went to the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!), an IHE accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). If other IHEs accredited by the HLC all let their standards slip, the HLC could potentially lose their recognition. Suddenly, 30,000+ students at The University of Iowa have a financial aid problem, the University of Iowa has a reputation problem, and I have a problem because my degree is from an IHE that is no longer accredited (recognized for its quality). Everybody loses when this happens.
Why are we hearing so much about accreditation lately?
The higher ed accreditation system in the US has gone largely unchanged since 1965. Last month, however, Florida’s governor filed a lawsuit focused on accreditation against the US Department of Education (ED). Why accreditation? Why now? I’m so glad you asked.
Florida recently passed a law that would require its IHEs (only the public institutions, for now) to change their institutional accrediting agencies every 10 years. On the surface, this may not sound like a big deal. It might even strike you as a motivator to keep IHEs striving for excellence, but, within the higher education community, it is pretty controversial. Here are some of the reasons why:
Since all accreditors have slightly different standards and requirements, Florida’s new law will require IHEs to drastically change their internal processes for documentation, exhibits, and narratives for every accreditation renewal cycle. I know this doesn’t sound like a problem, but consider the fact that preparing for accreditation takes years and requires multiple people across every department to achieve. Instead of focusing on making thoughtful improvements based on the findings in their previous accreditation cycle, IHEs will now need to dedicate considerable extra time, money, brainpower, and resources to completely uproot and change their processes every cycle. What was the last major process change you implemented in your organization? Was it super easy to get everyone on board? I’m guessing not.
After Florida passed this law, the US Department of Education (ED) issued three documents (links here: 1, 2, 3) that would require ED approval to switch accreditors and would require proof of “reasonable cause” to gain that approval. Florida’s lawsuit argues that these requirements violate “the private nondelegation doctrine, the 10th Amendment and Spending Clause, the Appointments Clause and the Administration Procedure Act.”
Florida’s governor has publicly (and on several occasions) expressed animosity toward Florida’s primary institutional accreditor, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), alleging that SACSCOC is pushing a “Marxist,” “woke,” agenda onto Florida’s public schools.
SACSCOC is a big deal. They are one of the largest institutional accrediting agencies in the United States. Currently, they accredit hundreds of IHEs across 11 states, and have issued multiple warnings about “unprecedented actions the governor has taken, including replacing most of the board at New College of Florida.”
Why should I care about accreditation?
We have simplified this topic as much as we dare in this blog, but it is immensely complicated (the Higher Education Act of 1965 is over 800 pages long). We should all be wary, though, when intricate systems comprised of thousands of people are reduced to political theater. Decisions about higher education should be made carefully and methodically, and they should be made by people who study and seek to understand its complexities and nuances. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s business owners, doctors, and world leaders—who gets to decide how they are educated? It’s certainly a question worth asking.
