The current higher education accreditation system harms students and taxpayers and is in desperate need for reform.
A panel discussion hosted by the Heritage Foundation reached this conclusion Monday afternoon. Led by Lindsey Burke, the panel featured former U.S. Senator and former University of Colorado president Hank Brown, American Council for Trustees and Alumni President Ann Neal, and Neal McClusky with the Cato Institute.
Federal funding for colleges and universities is currently tied to their accreditation reviews, but the ratings are done by regional boards and can be very inconsistent.
“Accreditation has become a road block to reform,” Brown said.
He said this process doesn’t actually measure quality because the reviewers are too busy acting as the gatekeeper for funding.
Neal held a similar view.
She said accreditation was supposed to be a voluntary peer review system, but it has become an “interference.”
Both Brown and Neal wanted to see Congress take up the accreditation reform when they discuss the re-upping of the Higher Education Act, expected to be discussed soon. They said the federal government should come up with a transparent system that measures the value of that college degree to tie federal funding to and to “unlink” the accreditation process with tax dollars.
McClusky took a more extreme view.
He believes federal funding should be phased out of higher education until it is removed entirely. This would free up accreditation to do what it was designed for, he said, “without the pressure and regulations that come with being the gateway.”
It would also “ultimately make college more affordable.” McClusky said federal funding is often hidden into the tuition cost. This would force colleges to be more transparent about where each tuition dollar was headed.
All three panelists believe de-linking federal funding from accreditation would be better for students and taxpayers.
The current setup is “duping and disserving consumers” into believing accreditation alone offers them “value,” Neal said. Removing accreditation from the funding model would give students better information and could impact affordability, she said.
De-linking it would not mandate quality, Brown added, but would require “disclosures to allow families to choose for themselves.”
