Washington — The Council for Higher Education Accreditation is meeting here this week, seeking to set an agenda for the new Congress and White House, and beginning to redefine itself as an organization.
A top priority for the group, which represents some 3,000 colleges and universities, is to try to steer federal rule making on accreditation issues in the Higher Education Act, which Congress reauthorized last year.
That law doubles colleges’ reporting requirements, making them disclose considerably more information about their graduation rates, grant aid, and — perhaps most significantly — the success of their teacher-training programs.
While institutions have considerable freedom to set their own standards under the act, the association wants to avoid stringent measures that could give the government even greater oversight.
“We want to work with government, but we also want to sustain the tools of peer review and self-regulation and responsible independence for higher education,” said Judith S. Eaton, president of the organization, which was formed in 1996.
Rep. Timothy H. Bishop, a Democrat of New York who was involved in shaping the accreditation measures in the Higher Education Act, told attendees he had similar concerns and would work to make sure the Education Department did not overstep its boundaries.
“I’m going to be watching to see to it that Congressional intent is honored. That the negotiated rule-making empowers accreditors, empowers faculty and staff to make the judgments they need to make for their campuses, and that those judgments not be imposed on them by government intrusion,” Mr. Bishop said.
A longer-term problem for CHEA, as the group is known, is its own identity. The organization began a process in September to reassure politicians and the public that institutions were not only capable of self-regulation but could do it better than the government and at less cost.
As part of that process, however, the association is considering its structure and role. One possibility for a new CHEA might be as a Congressionally chartered organization, similar to the National Academy of Sciences, said Robert C. Dickeson, who addressed the meeting this morning.
That designation “usually affords a degree of prestige and may induce some financial benefit,” said Mr. Dickeson, president emeritus of Northern Colorado University. But many at the meeting questioned the wisdom of aligning the organization with the federal government.
Ms. Eaton, president of CHEA, said Mr. Dickeson’s speech had been meant to be provocative, but offered just one possible future for the organization.
“This is one of a number of ideas. … This is an early phase of a very long and, hopefully, spirited and engaged conversation with all of our constituents,” she said. —Eric Kelderman
