The Trump administration plans to discuss overhauling the rules governing higher education’s accrediting agencies, a move officials think will inspire more innovation.
Reducing compliance requirements for accreditors and clearly defining their sphere of influence are Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ main goals, according to Undersecretary Diane Auer Jones.
The department plans to “promote greater access for students to high-quality innovative programs,” including online programs and competency-based education models. In the past, the rules governing accrediting agencies disincentivized them from approving similar models that fall outside of the higher education norm.
In a rule-making session to “rethink” the roles of accreditors in higher education, the administration will discuss the requirements for online education and the standardized definition for academic coursework – the credit hour.
Interestingly, Jones said that “the credit hour probably interferes with innovation [in higher education] almost more than anything.” Defined as one hour of classroom instruction and two hours of out-of-class work, institutions must offer programs meeting a minimum number of these hours in order to be approved.
As higher education changes, however, measuring all institutions by the same metric makes less sense, especially as the credit hour does not mesh well with online education. Yet, these educational institutions may have even more data on student mastery and faculty instructional hours due to their digital footprint than do traditional brick-and-mortar institutions.
Yet, focus on educational quality will still be a core goal of accrediting agencies, even if they are given more flexibility in other areas of oversight.
A near reversal of the Obama administration’s approach, which empowered accreditors to be tougher on non-traditional programs, the Trump administration believes that reconceptualizing their role will encourage higher education institutions to innovate without fear of being shuttered.
