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Accreditation - In the Fight of its Life? Part 2
Read Part 1 - Accreditation remains an enduring American institution, despite complaints about it
Part 2 - The Purposes of Accreditation, Then and Now
 The Purposes of Accreditation, Then and Now
In one sense, the critics of accreditation have projected onto the once-venerable accreditation enterprise anew, more compliance-centric set of duties and purposes not envisioned by the founders of themovement.
One of CHEA's publications defines accreditation succinctly:
Accreditation in the United States is a means to assure and improve higher education quality, assisting institutions and programs using a set of standards developed by peers. An institution or program that has successfully completed an accreditation review has in place the needed instructional, student support and other services to assist students to achieve their educational goals
Traditionally, accreditation has been viewed as a voluntary, peer-group process set up to:
- Identify academically sound and high quality institutions and programs for public purposes; and
- Stimulate self-improvement in institutions through continuous self-study and planning.
"Accreditation," writes Judith Eaton, "exists to assure that baseline expectations of academic quality aremet and to assist with improving quality….Accreditation is the voice of the professional communityspeaking to the worth of its efforts."
Since the mid-1980s, new purposes/roles have been added by the stakeholders and users of accreditation,notably by government, including:
- Gatekeeping function: accredit only trustworthy institutions that can then receive public funds;
- Consumer protection function: handle student complaints; provide data on student performance; publish outcomes data on institutions; and,
- Compliance function: police compliance with state and federal laws; monitor sales recruiting activities.
How accreditation addresses its critics in the coming years will determine if it will enjoy a robust future.
DETC's Brand of Accreditation
Speaking from the perspective of my nearly 40 years of experience in the field, I have come to cherish the tremendous good accreditation has done to improve institutions and ensure students get the best possibleeducation or training experience. Accreditation's contributions to improving education and protecting thestudents who study at a distance are beyond priceless.
In our view, any accredited institution delivers on its promises to its students. It behaves with honesty andintegrity. It gives value for the tuition it receives. Its students achieve the stated outcomes for a particularprogram. In a word, it is an institution meriting the public's trust. And when a student graduates from aDETC institution today, he or she is happy. Just about every graduate—96% was the average for allDETC institutions in 2010—said that they would recommend their alma mater to a friend for enrollment.
Among the 107 DETC accredited institutions today, some of them founded a century ago, there exists anenthusiastic and unconditional support for the 56 year old DETC accreditation program. Senior DETCinstitution executives continue to volunteer their precious time to devote to a genuine "peer group"accreditation.
Overall, the DETC membership views our particular brand of accreditation as vital to their own strategicgoals, essential to gaining the confidence of students, and critical to their institutional improvementefforts.
Perhaps the most salutary perceived benefit, from the DETC institutions' viewpoint, is that accreditationhas truly helped transform their institution into a more effective, stable, successful and student-centricorganization. Every DETC on-site evaluation generates a fact-filled document called a "Chair's Report,"which not only reports on compliance with standards for accreditation, but also contains several dozensuggestions for enhancement and strengthening of curricula, student services, teaching strategies andpractical ideas in how to meet stated missions and goals.
As one DETC CEO said, "DETC represents not only an invaluable third party endorsement of ouracademic quality, it also provides value-adding insights and suggestions for our continuous improvementprogram. We would be hard pressed to go out and try to buy this insight."
If you were to watch DETC's recently-released history, The American Way to Learn(www.theamericanwaytolearn.com), it is clear the single most transformative and influential force inhelping our sector gain public acceptance was the DETC accrediting program, founded in 1955, andgoing stronger than ever today.
DETC has taken a practical approach to the challenges posed by the critics of accreditation. We believethat we have found a way to address the issues of compliance enforcement with various laws and ruleswithin the framework of voluntary accreditation. The culture within the DETC community is to strive for100% compliance with all standards, laws and stakeholders' expectations for ethical conduct. It is simplythe only way to do business.
Among some of the recent initiatives undertaken by DETC to earn the public's trust are these:
- A comprehensive outcomes assessment program, with bright-line metrics customized to specific types of institutions, not a "one size fits all" standard.
- A requirement for every institution to make disclosures of student performance using a common DETC Consumer Information Disclosure form.
- Short, three-year grants of initial accreditation and a maximum five year grant thereafter.
- Comprehensive email surveys of random samples of students.
- Specific, prescriptive "rules of the road" for ethical recruiting and marketing.
- A national, prescriptive and consumer-friendly tuition refund policy
- Strengthened accreditation standards for assessing financial condition, outcomes, graduate programs, and dozens of other changes designed to enhance the DETC method of evaluation.
- Stringent, DETC-imposed limits on Title IV participation levels: No more than 75% of institution revenues may come from Federal Student Aid (as compared to 90% for all other for profit institutions); only degree-awarding institutions may participate in Title IV; and each institution seeking to participate in Title IV must first undergo a special on-site evaluation by DETC to assess its readiness to handle the complex program.
Stay tuned for Part 3...The Spotlights Are Turned On
Reprinted from the Fall 2011 DETC News in Cooperation with the DETC
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