Posts Tagged: accreditation & accountability

As core principles in designing the proposed system, the authors emphasized the need for accountability standards to apply to all institutions, while recognizing institutional differences by the level of programs.

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute highlights the need for an “equitable accountability system” in higher education that considers students’ demographic and economic background in assessing institutional performance.

Four higher education leaders look at College Unbound’s learner-centered, student-driven approach to higher education and the institution’s 10-year journey through regional accreditation.

Johan E. Uvin, president of the Institute for Educational Leadership and former acting assistant secretary under the Obama administration for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, writes that College Unbound is likely going to be one of the few innovation breakthroughs in higher education.

In 2015, Robert L. Carothers joined the board of College Unbound after stepping down from serving as the president at the University of Rhode Island for 18 years. Most of the students came thinking of themselves as having failed, he writes, but College Unbound “taught them to reframe failure and to see that their lives had been about learning, even if they could not see it.”

David A. Bergeron, senior fellow for postsecondary education policy at the Center for American Progress and formerly of the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education, considers how College Unbound works to reconcile the goal of greater access for older adults with the lack of meaningful outcomes.

The highly nontraditional model of College Unbound—a unique institution designed for low-income adults who have started college but not finished—presented regional accreditors with a challenge. Louis Soares and Ursula Gross look at the tensions between innovation and accreditation that such institutions present—and how they can be overcome.

The American Enterprise Institute and Third Way recently released the results of a survey examining the views of higher education experts on accountability, identifying areas of agreement and disagreement between partisan groups.

For many students, the decision of whether to attend college, let alone which college, is likely determined more by where they live than by graduation rates, programs offered or even salary after completion. ACE’s Jonathan Turk and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nicholas Hillman discuss the importance of “place” when addressing college choice process and policy.

Watch Brice W. Harris, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, discuss access and accountability in the 2016 Robert H. Atwell Lecture:

This video accompanies the newly released Quick Hit brief, “A More Uniform Way of Recognizing Online Degree Programs Across State Lines, with SARA (State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement) as a Focus.”

Good news from the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions (C-RAC) yesterday—the coalition announced plans to implement a common framework and understanding of terms for key actions regarding accredited institutions. Beginning this year, the terms “Warning,” “Probation,” “Show Cause,” “Withdrawal of Accreditation,” “Denial of Accreditation” and “Appeal” will be identical across regions, according to C-RAC’s plans…. Read more »