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28 août 2011

Quality Assurance in Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century

http://www.chea.org/images/chea-vert.gifCHEA Initiative White Paper: Quality Assurance in Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century and the Role of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (August 2011).
BY FRED HARCLEROAD, Introduction

The British magazine, The Economist, probably the leading globally informed publication of this type, in its September 8, 2005 issue, stated that U.S. higher education is “the best in the world.” Although not a “system” and not managed by a central ministry, it is clearly an identifiable enterprise. And its outstanding stature is attributed to its not being organized under the authority of a central government. What holds it together? In part, it is participation by thousands of diverse collegiate institutions and their skilled faculties in the self-regulatory process of accreditation that has developed in the past century. As society needed new, diverse institutions, higher education changed and adapted. Without the police powers of government, and primarily voluntary in nature, it has worked to improve and expand programs and degree offerings. Core values of a democratic society have been maintained, along with autonomy of diverse institutions responding to their varying missions.
Why and how is this condition possible? Two major factors of our republic contribute. They are, first, our unique Constitution, and, second, our unique tripartite system of providing goods and services in our society.
The United States of America, in forming the Constitution after achieving independence from England, developed a combined federal and state system, with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution listing 18 powers delegated to the Congress and Amendment No. X stating, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The term, “education” is not used in the Constitution or The Federalist Papers developed to encourage its passage. Therefore, education in all of its forms, including higher education, is reserved for the states.
As a result, the chartering, establishment and operation of higher education and all institutional education activity is a state power and not a federal power. The federal government has oversight responsibility with regard to the District of Columbia and provides for some specialized institutions in the District. And it provides for institutes to train military forces needed to defend the country and its borders - but all other activity must be state-chartered and required to conform to state law.
The United States has also developed a plan for providing goods and services for its society that is unique. It is tripartite: business and commerce (profit-making and tax-paying); state and federal governments (funded by taxes on business, tariffs and, after the passage of the 16th amendment, taxes on individual incomes) and, finally, thousands of voluntary associations working in the public interest and not responsible, in the main, for paying taxes. Governments are totally responsible for legal matters, consumer protection and exerting the police powers required to enforce the laws and their associated regulations. The voluntary organizations cannot enforce laws or exert the police powers of the government.
Accrediting bodies are among the thousands of voluntary organizations. They are 501(c)3 operations, as is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), a national membership organization charged with national coordination of accreditation. As a result, consumer protection laws against such entities as degree mills, accreditation mills and illegally operating organizations claiming to be educational institutions must be subject to enforcement by government agencies – the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) or state government supervisory agencies...

Possible Future Emphases of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation

The current CHEA Initiative to date has identified eight general issues for which to determine action plans for the future activities. Several are comparable to the nine functions outlined by Robert Glidden to the Congress in 1997, including advocacy for accreditation, relations with federal and state governments and relations with accrediting associations (such as recognition). International quality assurance as an additional key CHEA activity has been underway for many years and very successfully. Accountability has been a board policy effort for several years, with some success. Attention to the institutions with profit as a major objective has been limited. As a consequence, it is appropriate to suggest some specific activities that CHEA can consider for future action.
The CHEA Institute for Research and Study of Accreditation and Quality Assurance, with its publications, is one of the organization’s most effective services. A number of possible studies are suggested that the Institute could carry out in future years and possibly affect future improvements in some CHEA recognition responsibilities:
1) Inside Accreditation, dated June 14, 2010, on the feasibility of “Selling Accreditation” lists three possible standards and five practices that accrediting bodies could include in their approval process when a currently accredited college is sold. A study of current written standards and actual practices would be useful in this future area of consideration.
2) A current public concern is that peer review includes definite conflict of interest. A potentially valuable study could involve contact with a statistically useful sample of the peer reviewers on site visitation teams during the past three-to-five years to determine their reasons for participating. The tasks are demanding and essentially professional service. The result of such a study could provide information on whether there is actual “conflict of interest.” Include also any data on compensation (usually very low, a token payment).
3) Conflict of interest, if accurately described, involves professional ethics. It would be useful to make a study of existing codes of ethics for those on evaluation teams and review bodies and develop a national code of ethics.
4) Make a study of the standards listed by each regional association to determine if there is a set of common core standards for review and what differences are significant. Determine if practices and review guidelines have a comparable core and explore for process comparability and procedures for visiting teams to follow. Then, examine programmatic comparable data – and try to determine a common data set that all institutions should develop for use on a yearly basis for long range planning and yearly budgeting and fund allocation. Use the common data set for all accreditation self-studies.
5) Make a study of CHEA’s 3,000 member presidents and the ways they use accreditation.
6) Studying learning outcomes is more difficult for overall institutional than for programmatic accreditors. However, it would be useful to make a simple study of these two different types of accrediting and recommend some common core outcome measures that would be useful to recommend to various accrediting bodies.
All of these potential studies could provide vital information publications focusing on best practices in accreditation. In several areas for future efforts over the years, the best thing that CHEA can do is continue the current work. With a limited staff and budget, the current products are very effective. Cooperative publications with a few critical organized groups, such as the State Higher Education Executive Officers organization and the Education Commission of the States, would be a good follow-up to the NCHEMS 2010 analysis of state uses of accreditation. A few findings that many states have laws and operations using accreditation might lead to expanded use. A common suggested legal/regulatory wording could encourage other states to pass such laws and develop such regulations. Particular areas for such action are:
1. Whether accreditation is needed to operate (40 states);
2. Requiring nonpublic institutions to be accredited (21 states);
3. Have CHEA recognition for all states with this requirement;
4. Have accreditation (using CHEA) required for out-of state institutions (44 states);
5. Accreditor must be recognized by CHEA as well as USDE (8 states); and
6. Increase state transfer requiring accreditation (8 states)
Dennis Jones, in a 2002 CHEA report (Different Perspectives on Information About Educational Quality: Implications for the Role of Accreditation), suggested that regional accreditors establish three levels of accredited status (meets minimum requirements, exceeds minimum requirements or far exceeds minimum requirements). Some programmatic accreditors have already moved in this direction. An analysis of the programmatic accreditors varied levels and the attitudes of the regionals could be somewhat controversial but interesting to do in later years.
Since the basic group that developed and continues to support CHEA was, and is, the presidents of 3,000 institutions, the President’s Project remains a valuable activity. Presidents are key members of the CHEA board. It could be useful to have a special part of each conference devoted to their analysis of continuing and future CHEA efforts. An alternative would be to have a special session of the group of presidents that originally voted to establish CHEA, including key association board members and their executive officers.
CHEA is a unique member organization with a continuing problem because bureaucrats in the executive branch of government will continually try to go beyond the Constitution and legislative limits as the money they control to distribute to students for attendance increases. Future efforts must maximize CHEA’s extensive services to the presidents of institutions that were responsible for establishing CHEA and support its funding needs to operate successfully, and is critically important to the needs for quality assurance in the U.S. higher education enterprise in the future. In this way, CHEA can continue as a key factor in the maintenance of the U.S. higher education enterprise as “best in the world.”

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