Learning Resources

Abstract: In the continuing environment of accountability, we have created false distinctions between reducing costs and improving productivity as opposed to examining the quality of the product produced and the work completed. The policy discussion has focused on completion and graduation, with little emphasis on the quality of learning. New assessments move quality to the center of the conversation. Accreditation is making evidence of student learning quality a priority.

Abstract: Accreditation, the primary means of assuring and improving quality in U.S. higher education, is the oldest and most diverse quality review system in the world. During the 1950s, accreditation entered into a public-private partnership with the federal government, serving as the nation’s reliable authority on academic quality. While this partnership has been effective in many ways, it is now undergoing major change as the expanding governmental regulatory authority to judge quality eclipses accreditation’s collegial model of quality review. This shift challenges the core values of both accreditation and higher education and threatens heretofore successful practices such as the judging of quality by academics and institutional self-determination. While fully countering an expansion of governmental authority is unlikely, action from the academic community is essential to contain this expansion and preserve core academic values.

Abstract: Regional accreditation in the United States is nearly 100 years old and has continued to focus on its founding principles, including academic quality and institutional improvement. Significant federal financial commitments to higher education date back to the mid-1950s, and the provision of these ballooning expenditures has been linked to accreditation. Tensions have developed between the original purposes of accreditation and the growing need for regulatory compliance to ensure that federal funds are well spent. This article describes those tensions, identifies current efforts to address them, and offers some practical suggestions for the future.

Abstract: Institutional accreditation has served higher education and the public interest well for more than a century, but now its purposes are changing quickly and dramatically. Accreditation began as a voluntary, nongovernmental peer review process internally managed by colleges and universities to determine if schools met threshold tests of academic quality and to facilitate institutional self-improvement. However, it has increasingly become the primary mechanism for assuring policy makers and the public that institutions of higher education are academically sound and offer studentsa valuable product. This is a trend that seems likely to continue. As federal support for higher education grows and the importance of postsecondary credentials plays a larger and larger role in individual and national well-being, the demands placed on accreditors are likely to increase. Indeed, a quick overview of the history of accreditation and the federal government illustrates that the use of accreditors to pursue specific federal policy objectives is not a new development, but rather a trend that has been underway for a long time.

Abstract: The Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) addresses the conflict between assurance and improvement in accreditation by providing an innovative process that focuses institutions on improving process quality and performance while also generating solid evidence that they meet accreditation standards. AQIP consciously infuses quality concepts and techniques into accreditation by focusing an institution’s attention on itself as a quality system that can improve its own operation and performance.