Panel Drafting New Rules for College Accreditation Wraps Up Early

Washington — Negotiators for the U.S. Department of Education today accomplished something rarely attributed to the federal government: They finished ahead of schedule and earned a round of applause for their work to draft new rules governing the accreditation of colleges and universities.

In a process called negotiated rule-making, the department’s representatives worked with a panel of stakeholders, including leaders of accrediting agencies, college officials, and students, to hash out draft language for the new rules, which are required under legislation to renew the Higher Education Act that Congress passed last year.

After three rounds of meetings, the participants voted this afternoon — a day earlier than scheduled — to accept proposed language on 16 different issues, which affect how accrediting organizations monitor their institutional members and are themselves monitored by the department.

Among the most substantive changes are more-specific guidelines about what kind of due process accreditors use in their decisions to approve or reject institutions, and measures giving the institutions more of an opportunity to appeal adverse decisions by the accrediting bodies.

Accrediting agencies also will get more scrutiny from the department under the new rules, especially when they decide to include distance- or online-education programs. The draft regulations also give the department more authority to grant or withhold federal recognition of an accrediting agency in rare cases when the 18-member National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity is not functioning. Congress last year overhauled that committee, which advises the department on decisions about accreditors, and members of its new version are not expected to be seated until next year.

Although some participants in the rule-making process said the results were far from perfect, many praised the process as a big step toward healing the rift that developed after a 2006 report from a commission appointed by then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings recommended that accrediting agencies set specific accountability standards for institutions.

The draft rules will now go out for public comment, and will not take effect until July 2010. —Eric Kelderman