Some quotes:
Margaret Spellings may be secretary emerita, but the assessment and accountability movements— which of course predated her commission — are alive and well. And if colleges think they can ignore these pushes, they are seriously misguided. That was the message behind speeches and the announcement of two new national education campaigns here Thursday at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
[B]ackers said that colleges must get out ahead of these issues — or others will set up systems that could damage higher education. Higher education “cannot be playing defense,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. “That is the message of the day.”
[According to Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation], even if the federal government doesn’t increase regulation of accreditation, colleges needed to take it more seriously. “The institutions need to do more to treat accreditation as an ongoing element of quality improvement,” not “an abrupt and not always welcome intervention,” she said.
[Stanley O. Ikenberry, former president of the American Council on Education and the University of Illinois] raised the question that is no doubt on the minds of those who have hoped that assessment debates might fade with the end of the Spellings era. “Why now?” The answer, he said, is that assessment has been the subject of debate for 25-plus years “but for a long time has seemed stuck on Page 1.” With the visibility brought to the issue by Spellings, with moves by leading college groups to create new accountability systems, and with a proliferation of testing systems, “the next three to five years present a period of significant opportunity” and the future of assessment is “likely to be shaped in important ways,” he said. Higher education needs to take the lead, he argued. Ikenberry also reminded audience members of something they were all talking about anyway: College budgets are being cut everywhere. Reliable, respected systems of assessment and accountability, he said, will help leaders “make wise choices.”
