July 23, 2008

Accreditor Can Certify New Institutions Once Again, Education Dept. Says

Washington — The Education Department restored the American Academy for Liberal Education’s full accreditation authority on Tuesday, granting it federal recognition for the next three years.

The academy, which serves a group of private, religiously affiliated liberal-arts colleges, has been unable to accredit new colleges since last July, when Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings withdrew its recognition at the advice of her National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. The existing accreditation of colleges was not affected by that action.

Naciqi, as the advisory panel is known, recommended last December that the secretary restore the academy’s right to accredit, but Ms. Spellings did not act on that recommendation until yesterday.

In a letter to the academy, known as the AALE, Ms. Spellings said she would grant the agency recognition for three years, rather than the five years requested by AALE, because she remained concerned that the AALE is not doing enough to monitor colleges’ efforts to measure student learning.

The AALE has been cited by Naciqi several times since 2001 for either not having clear standards for measuring student learning or not collecting and reviewing data on how its institutions measure such outcomes.

Ms. Spellings also ordered the AALE to submit two reports to the department demonstrating its “continued implementation of student achievement standards and monitoring mechanisms.” —Kelly Field

Comments

1. By not having clear standards for university accreditation these agencies are simply gate keepers who take dues from the school for a tagline. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the accrediting agency and the student who does not suspect they lack real authority over the institution.

   Further, there is a lack of true objective standards by which a student can measure academic complaince or be assured that they are receiving what they are paying for. In a competatitve marketplace the lack of student rights makes the educational system seriously compromised.

   FERPA as it exists now does not guarantee that a student can access their own file or records. Students can only view materials IF the school has retained them. This is also true for transcripts and grades, residencies and scores.

   We are in great need of educational reform in higher education. Our state courts bear this out by demonstrating an unwillingness to uphold or rule on an objective standard that apparently does not exist. It makes better fiscal sense for our tax dollar to set a criteria and give agencies the authority to act rather than trying to offset the damage.

   — MS    Jul 24, 09:30 AM    #

2. MS writes tommyrot. In a competitive system, students have the ultimate right to switch schools if they believe they are not getting sufficient value for their money. Some do. Students don’t know and don’t care care about accreditation, only the Department of Education does.

   The only effective assessment tool is that used by faculty when they issue a final grade. The rest is bunk. Wasting our time and effort on bureaucratizing assessment is the worst thing done to higher education in my lifetime.

   Faculty time and energy spent designing, administering, and reporting the extra layer of assessment is time taken away from teaching, scholarship and thinking about things that matter more. We have sacrificed the quality of higher education to one more stupid fad invented by educationists who promote their careers at the expense of the public good, Spellings and Nasty Naciqi prominent among them. May the next fad come soon and displace this one…

   — Mervyn Emrys    Jul 24, 11:29 AM    #

3. “tommyrot” – I like it.

   — Kyle David    Jul 25, 10:22 AM    #

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