The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, a federal panel that has already made colleges nervous over whether it will call for testing all students, may have just given colleges more reason to be worried.

This afternoon, the panel posted on its Web site a series of six papers on key topics affecting the work of the commission, which is scheduled to deliver its final report to the education secretary, Margaret Spellings, by August 1. The papers deal with such subjects as accountability, accreditation, and quality assurance.

In an e-mail message announcing the release of the papers, the Education Department said the reports “are not formal recommendations by the commission, nor are they intended to reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Education.” Rather, it said, “their purpose is to inform and energize the public about key postsecondary issues and inspire continued national dialogue around the future of higher education in America.” The papers “may assist the commission in forming consensus around these issues,” the department said.

For all of the department’s protestations, however, people in higher education are likely to regard the papers as the first draft of the commission’s final report. And what they read may worry them.

A report on the six papers will appear tomorrow on this Web site.