Lawmakers Call for More Accountability From Accreditation System

By RICHARD MORGAN

Members of a House of Representatives subcommittee, meeting last week to assess the role of accreditation in higher education, largely criticized the country's 50-year-old accreditation system as failing to ensure academic quality, lacking accountability, and driving up both tuition and college costs.

Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, a California Republican and chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness, which held the hearing, set the tone early on by saying, "If [a