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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

US Accreditation: Bridging the International and National Dialogue Gap

Judith S. Eaton
Judith S. Eaton is president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a nongovernmental institutional membership organization that provides national coordination of accreditation in the United States. E-mail: eaton@chea.org.

Throughout this decade, international conversations about higher education have been punctuated with significant attention to accreditation and quality assurance. Whether the subject is expanding access to higher education, the need for global competitiveness, or the imperative to create knowledge economies, there is a sophisticated understanding of the relevance of robust quality review to the success of these endeavors. Central and often dominant in these deliberations is accreditation as practiced in the United States, its operation and accomplishments.

Yet, something is missing—a major oversight—in the international dialogue when it turns to US accreditation. There is little attention to the concerns, criticisms, and challenges to accreditation as practiced in the United States. However, while the international conversation proceeds, there is a robust US national dialogue underway focused almost exclusively on the limitations of accreditation, with an image of accreditation as an enterprise under siege.

The International Conversation
While international colleagues are not, quite appropriately, seeking to imitate what is done in the United States, they are looking for effective practices and insights that they might glean from the long and extensive history of US accreditation. The sheer scope of US activity—with 19 active institutional accreditors and 62 active programmatic organizations—is impressive to many. Typically, questions are raised about whether and how this extensiveness and diversity can sustain appropriate and aspirational levels of quality.

The international conversations also focus on US accreditation's strong embrace of core educational values, perhaps its most attractive feature. Colleagues are aware that advocacy for institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and the centrality of institutional mission is fundamental to US accreditation, assuring a firm foundation for the historically strong academic leadership role that colleges and universities have played over the years. Colleagues often note that, at least to date, control of accreditation has remained in the hands of higher education itself, run by independent, nongovernmental bodies created for this specific purpose. This is in contrast to the government-dominated control of colleges and universities typical of many other countries.

The National Conversation
In contrast, the concern and criticism characterizing the US national conversation has been driven by the changing expectations of US politicians and policymakers as well as an informed segment of the private sector that has made accreditation a subject of ongoing national debate. This last sector includes, for example, organizations of trustees of colleges and universities, philanthropic organizations, and research institutes—in the tradition of a strong US civil society.

During the past two years, the concerns and criticism have been most powerfully expressed through a nationwide Commission on the Future of Higher Education. This body of educators, business leaders, and policymakers, appointed by the US secretary of education, has been a source of unprecedented and sustained federal and national criticism of accreditation, challenging both accreditors and the higher education community. These concerns about the role of accreditation are levied in a climate in which the demand for higher education is great and the price of higher education even greater, engendering considerable anxiety about access and value for money.

Concerns and Criticisms
As led by the commission, the national conversation is overwhelmingly about accreditation's perceived limitations as these relate to student achievement, transparency, student mobility, and operating structures. Accreditation is viewed as lacking accountability in promoting and enhancing student achievement. It is charged with neglect of the rigor of undergraduate education and an inability to provide comparable data about the quality of institutions and programs. Students and the public, for example, cannot use accreditation to easily compare the relative strengths of institutions and cannot turn to accreditation (e.g., to explain the decline in the standing of the United States internationally).

Accreditation is criticized for allegedly failing to meet current transparency expectations in the world of the Internet, the Web, search engines, and instant information about almost any topic. Accreditation reports are not routinely made public, nor do accreditors regularly supply detailed information to the public about the strengths and limitations of the institutions they review.

There are also charges that accreditation is a barrier to student mobility among college and universities, standing in the way of student advancement through transfer of credit at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. While more than 60 percent of students obtaining a bachelor's degree attend at least two institutions, there are fault lines in the student mobility system, especially between two-year and four-year institutions and between for-profit and nonprofit institutions.

The national conversation also includes questions about the ongoing effectiveness of the current structure and operation of accreditation as these were forged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Does it make sense to continue the geographically based accreditation represented by the regional (institutional) accrediting bodies that dominate US accreditation? Do these regional configurations currently limit the options for individual colleges and universities seeking an institutional accreditation? This, in turn, leads to a concern that accreditation is not adequately subject to market forces that some believe can, through enhanced competition, strengthen quality. Are there too many programmatic accreditors, with the 62 active organizations mentioned above? Is this contributing to a fragmentation in the professions?

Joining the Two Conversations
The international conversation about quality assurance and accreditation that tends to focus on the strengths of US accreditation can benefit from at least some additional attention to the national conversation of concerns and criticisms in the United States. Awareness of US concerns can assist quality assurance leaders in other countries in assessing the value of their own ongoing initiatives. Understanding these concerns can provide an early alert to developing countries that are in the preliminary stages of establishing their own quality assurance organization and structure. At the same time, the US national conversation can benefit from awareness of the international conversation—a reminder of accreditation's strengths and usefulness, a view that is lost in the current national dialogue.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number50/p16_Eaton.htm