The role of accreditors in American higher education is often overlooked as few of us bother to check the bottom of a university’s web page for the list of accreditations. Yet, their work is essential to ensure that colleges and universities provide quality education.
In recent years, however, accreditors have faced increased scrutiny and pressure from both federal regulators and political forces. This has led to a difficult struggle for accreditors as they attempt to balance the need to improve institutions with the need to safeguard federal student aid while navigating a fiercely partisan political environment.
Accreditors may be the only systemic bodies to provide independent evaluations of educational institutions, ensuring that they meet rigorous standards of academic excellence and accountability. In doing so, they help to safeguard the integrity of the degrees that American students earn and ensure that these degrees hold value over time. At the same time, accreditors can often be easily blamed for unsuccessful student outcomes or student debt defaults.
Accreditors’ unique role of being a focal point of an educational field – it is much easier to attack one organization which can channel the pressure to many more versus attacking a large number of educational institutions one by one – makes them a unique target for their critics who argue that accreditors are too focused on compliance and paperwork, rather than on student outcomes which are poorly documented and measured. Failure to hold institutions accountable for poor graduation rates, low or inadequate workforce absorption, and a wide mismatch between incomes and student debt are the most frequent and potent arguments.
The increased intensity of American politics has not left accreditors unscared, and, with education becoming a key election issue, the scrutiny is likely to intensify. Political forces on both sides of the aisle have taken aim at accreditors, seeing them as a barrier to innovation or as a tool for enforcing ideological conformity. Some argue that accreditors have stifled innovation in higher education by enforcing traditional academic standards and preventing alternative models of education from emerging. Others contend that accreditors have been complicit in perpetuating systemic inequalities in higher education and failed to hold institutions accountable for addressing issues of race, equity, and social justice.
The struggle facing accreditors today is complex and multifaceted. While more than ever, they play a crucial role in ensuring the quality of and accountability in American higher education, they face criticism and pressure from all sides, with competing demands for compliance, outcomes, and innovation. As we debate the future of American higher education, it is essential that we consider the role of accreditors in this landscape and how we can support them in their efforts to improve institutions, safeguard federal student aid, and navigate political pressures.
Can technology innovation and digitization be the answer to this tsunami of diverse criticism?