George C. Leaf and Roxana Burris, American Council of Trustees and Alumni
October 2002
George C. Leaf and Roxana Burris wrote this 55-page report for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It does a good job of setting forth key failings of the current system of institutional accreditation. (One may worry, though, about its historical accuracy. It refers twice to a 1952 "higher education act" that I don't believe existed.) A number of its recommendations are sound. One big one, however, is at best na??ve: the suggestion that Washington stop requiring accreditation as a precondition for eligibility for federal student aid dollars and instead trust the market, assuming that students won't enroll in bad schools. Would that it were so. All sorts of private and peer rating services (such as the famous U.S. News guides) help, but people are still easily duped by false claims made by colleges and their "proprietary" counterparts. At least until Americans have decent comparative information as to the academic value added by individual institutions - which would require a sophisticated testing and/or tracking system that the higher education "community" staunchly opposes - I don't see that the consumer marketplace is an adequate replacement for accreditation, despite the latter system's myriad flaws. Have a look at http://www.goacta.org/Reports/accrediting.pdf.
