Accreditation reform: Dull but important!

Kevin Carey, who writes for Education Sector and lots of other publications, recently testified before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity

To be blunt, I believe the accreditors overseen by NACIQI should not be in the business of deciding whether for-profit colleges and universities should have access to the federal Title IV student aid system. The heart of accreditation is peer review. And the power of peer review does not lie with the creation of or adherence to specific rules and guidelines. Instead, it lies with shared norms and values. That’s all that “peer” means, in the end — persons or organizations with whom one shares fundamental ideas about the nature of things. Peer approval is extremely important and influential, as we see in the scholarly communities that thrive in higher education. But it doesn’t work if those being reviewed are not actually peers.

And now, for the rest of the story...