Spellings faces the accreditors: are new ways of measuring higher education in the works?

True to her promise made in the fall, U.S. secretary of education Margaret Spellings is continuing to address issues in higher education. In late November she convened an accreditation forum in Washington, D.C., with more than 60 representatives from disparate higher education institutions, councils, and associations. The Council for Aid to Education, the University of Texas System, and the American Association of Community Colleges are a sample of organizations represented.

Her buzzwords, as expected, were accessibility, affordability, and accountability. The forum, specifically, discussed the goal of aligning the current system of accreditation with proof of student learning. Student learning outcomes may eventually be part of a national database of information, which will allow students and parents to compare overall student performance at accredited colleges and universities.

Spellings has been very critical of the accreditation system. This was reflected in the final report written by her Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Her September speech introducing the report, given at the National Press Club, questioned whether IHEs are doing enough to ensure that students are graduating with the skills they need.

In their defense, the higher education accrediting bodies say that they have already begun improving processes and making changes. Following 1998's Congressional directive to make "success with respect to student achievement" a top priority, several regional accrediting bodies, including members of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, shifted their emphasis away from metrics that view financial solvency or how many faculty members have doctorate degrees, to direct measures of student learning.

At University of the South (Tenn.), the English department has devised a way for all professors to measure similar student work in all classes. The new method of measurement goes into effect next fall. The change follows a directive from the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, the university's accrediting body, which insisted that more focus on student learning outcomes was necessary.

Spellings and her team will admit that improvements to the accreditation process were in the works before the commission released its final report, but they contend that the changes have not come fast enough.

The outcome of November's forum is mixed, says attendee Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. "There are no details, but there are plans to take the next steps and have individual meetings with accreditors." Eaton is taking a positive approach to the changes. "We believe these are the right issues to be discussing, but we need to take the right positions." What she resists--and what many fear--is a federal fiat impacting all of U.S. higher education.

SOUND BITE

'Affirmative action is alive and well and it's not going to go away.

--Linda Avila, director of staff affirmative action at University of California, Los Angeles.