"Promoting Truth and Common Sense in Accreditation"

The Truth About Accreditation

Our organization represents "truth in accreditation" and seeks to promote academic freedom, freedom of education, innovation, and competition in higher education.

After all, institutions don't learn, people learn.  We should be focused on educational outputs not inputs.  In other words, learning is the output we desire.  Unfortunately, all of the attention gets paid to educational inputs, that is, the number of books in the library, the number of campus buildings, the so-called qualifications of faculty, etc. 

In the age of the internet and the distance learning world, most of the traditional educational inputs no longer matter and really never mattered in the first place. 

Students learn best wherever they are with the proper guidance and structure.  One does not learn better by virtue of sitting in Boston, Massachusetts as opposed to Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  Student's don't learn by osmosis.  They learn by reading, study, writing and speaking.

Evaluation of learning programs is not a complicated process, even though traditional educators, tenured-professors, and traditional accrediting bodies pretend that the process is rocket science.  It is not!

There is a great deal of misunderstanding associated with the truth about accreditation in the United States.  There is also a great deal of passion among many people, especially those who resist competition in higher education. 

Those who benefit from the current system are very resistant to competition, change, innovation or improvement.

Tenured professors, government employees, employees of traditional colleges and universities are highly threatened by developments in distance learning and other innovations which threaten their control of and access to public money. 

Accreditation is only ONE measure of the quality of a school's educational offerings. 

More importantly, the public can easily protect itself with relatively simple inquiries into the credentials of an educational institution and its graduates.  One does not need an accrediting body, a state government, or the federal government to determine if a program of study and its graduates meet their own standards as employers. 

In the final analysis, as an employer or student, the best method of assuring educational quality is to evaluate it for yourself.

1.  "Education accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of an educational institution or program are evaluated by an external body to determine if applicable standards are met.  Should the standards be met, accredited status is granted by the agency."

2.  In the United States...the quality assurance process is independent of government and performed by private membership associations."

3.  "When discussing accreditation in the United States, it is important that the concept of accreditation not be confused with authority to operate.  The authority to operate an education entity in the U.S. is granted by each of the states individually.  The U. S. is a federal republic.  The federal government possesses only specific, limited powers with all others reserved to the states..."

4.  "...the U. S. Department of Education officially states, it does not accredit schools.  Instead, accreditation commissions are formed, funded, and operated by their members to create an academic community that is self-regulating."

5.  "...The federal government makes no distinction between accreditation bodies, giving all equal standing."

6.  "There is a wide variation among the individual states in the requirements applied for private, post-secondary institutions."

7.  "In the United States, education accreditation has long been established as a peer review process coordinated by accreditation commissions and their members." 

8.  "...the authority of the U. S. Department of Education does not extend to authorizing schools to operate, enroll students, or award degrees.  In addition, the U. S. Department of Education (USDE) is not responsible for the accreditation of institutions, nor is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), which is a non-governmental body." 

Quoted from Wikipedia