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In the past three days Ed Central has taken a look at Improving Accreditation by investigating the dynamics around reform, presenting a way to bridge those gaps, and laying out a design for an alternative approval system. In this final post we consider what accreditors themselves could do to improve the system. Previous posts are , , and .

Like much of higher education policy, accreditation is strictly governed by the federal law. This means options for reform absent Congressional action are limited. For example, the U.S. Department of Education is expressly forbidden from setting any requirements for accreditors related to student learning.

While the strictness of the Higher Education Act means most large-scale changes to accreditation will require legislation, there are smaller activities that accreditors themselves could pursue. These won’t drastically upend the system, but they will make it more efficient and smarter, which is a start.

Consistency

Non-Congressional accreditation reform can only really happen if the accreditors themselves finally take greater ownership for making the system work better. And that has to start with definitions. As , it’s imperative that accreditors start using the same terms and definitions to explain their work. Doing so will create greater consistency across the country and ensure that terms like “show cause” or “warning” will have a broadly understood meaning.

Fortunately, the regional accreditors are already following this suggestion. The Council for Regional Accrediting Commissions (CRAC) that it would adopt six common terms: warning, probation, show cause, withdrawal of accreditation, denial of accreditation, and appeal. This voluntary and self-driven process shows how regional accreditors could come together to make changes themselves.

Two important steps should follow. First, national accrediting agencies should create a similar set of uniform definitions. Keeping regional and national definitions separate for the moment is acceptable since the type of work and oversight they do is somewhat different. But national accrediting agencies have just as much an obligation to self-improvement as their regional peers.

Second, there needs to be consistency in what triggers the use of those terms. For example, here’s the agreed-upon definition for “warning:”

“Indicates that an institution has been determined by the commission not to meet one or more standards for accreditation.” ((Standards mean any requirement for accreditation, including eligibility requirements, standards, criteria, or policies of the accreditor.))

So we know that any college placed on warning will have failed to meet at least one standard. But the common definition does not apply to the two more important elements: the standards themselves and decisions about whether the standard has been violated.

Common definitions will only become meaningful once other parts of the decision process also have greater consistency. For that occur, regional accreditors (and national ones in a separate group) need to create more commonality on their specific standards as well as how decisions are made about what constitutes a violation. Doing so will ensure that the entire accreditation process would be more consistent across the country. It would also create greater cover for accreditation agencies who do take action against colleges. Imagine the implications in the over the Community College of San Francisco if the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) could point to concrete best practices it was following in making its decision. It certainly would not eliminate all pushback, but would give it a firmer process and decision ground to stand on (though certainly never eliminate all pushback).

Transparency

Right now, students attending West Los Angeles College can easily view their . But move 3 miles south to students attending the West Los Angeles branch of Everest College and they cannot see any of these documents. That’s because public colleges post their accreditation documents, while private ones only do so if their accreditor requires it. Some, such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) . Other accreditors, especially the national ones, do not.

Having read through several accreditation reports over the last few weeks, it’s clear that simply making those documents available is not going to create some kind of transparency-driven rethinking of college choice. But accreditors could still play a role here. That’s because accreditors are currently the only entities with the credibility and formal role to look at college learning at all types of institutions. While some states may do similar work at public colleges, they rarely have jurisdiction over private ones. And the Department is barred from doing this work.

Accreditors should leverage their role in learning outcomes measurement to create consistent policies for colleges they approve to disclose learning information. What gets released does not have to be any different from what accreditors are already requiring, but it should be put out in a manner that’s easier for a student to understand. The exact content can and absolutely would vary, but there should be guiding principles about ease of understanding and similar elements. The effect would be to leverage onerous work already being undertaken to help students better answer the question “what will I learn?” as they consider colleges.

A lot to do

Making the accreditation system work better is a massive challenge. As the posts over the past week have laid out, it requires reconciling differing critiques, creating new incentives and greater flexibility, and establishing credible alternatives. All of that will take time. While we wait, accreditors need to start taking greater and more public responsibility for self-driven improvement.