Student Loan Blog : accreditation

Higher Education Accreditation

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:03:00 GMT

Who gets to choose what is acceptable when it comes to student performance in higher education; bottom-line, what agency sets the standards for accreditation. According to an April 19, 2007 article written by Doug Lederman, titled “Showdown Looms on Accreditation,” that appeared in Inside Higher Ed, “For months, college leaders and Education Department officials have been sparring over whether and how the federal government should change its rules governing higher education accreditation. The core issue: to what extent the department should demand that accrediting agencies, rather than individual colleges themselves, set minimum levels of acceptable performance by institutions on measures of how much their students learn.”

So, what’s the big deal anyway? Why shouldn’t the Department of Education and the federal government be allowed to change its own rules governing the standards by which to measure students? Well, the same reason you might not want the Department of Motor Vehicles to choose what you have for dinner, because it is federal intrusion, not on your dietary habits but into academic policy making by making it more institutionalized.

The Soft Sell Change

Although the Department of Education is beginning with a “soft sell,” many see this as the path to federal control. For example, Lederman reported:

“Most notably, institutions and programs themselves, rather than accrediting agencies, would be required to set their own ‘expected levels of performance’ and demonstrate that performance using ‘quantitative and qualitative measures that are externally validated, as appropriate.’

“But at their core, the regulations would seem to have largely the same end result: Because the standards would require accrediting agencies to judge ‘the appropriateness of the level of performance established by the institution or program’ and whether the institution has shown evidence of ‘acceptable performance,’ accreditors would still be telling institutions whether they are performing adequately.

“And because, under the draft regulatory language, the federal government would evaluate accreditors based on their ‘judgments’ of the institutions’ standards, the federal government would still be dictating definitions of ‘quality’ to American colleges, if slightly less directly, critics say.

“‘At the end of the day, this would be federalizing accreditation,’ said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, higher education’s main lobbying group. ‘It would represent a fundamental change in the relationship between accreditors and schools, and therefore between the Department of Education and schools.’”

Transfer of Academic Credit Issues

It appears as if the other hot button issue that is being raised with the policy changes is the issue of transfer credit between colleges, specifically between accredited for-profit schools and regionally accredited colleges. Lederman wrote:

“The new regulatory language released by the department this week would also make a change in the other most controversial aspect of its agenda: accreditors’ and colleges’ policies on the transfer of academic credit. Officials of many for-profit and other nationally accredited colleges have complained that the academic credits of their students are routinely turned away by regionally accredited colleges in the admissions process, based solely on the fact that they came from nationally accredited colleges. This issue deeply divides nonprofit and for-profit colleges, and the latter have pushed hard for a change in federal policy.

“The new proposals maintain a plan to require accrediting agencies to have policies stating that the colleges they monitor cannot base decisions about whether to accept a transferring student’s credits on the accreditation status of the ‘sending’ institution, and to require that institutions inform prospective students about their transfer policies. But the department’s new proposal would eliminate the previous draft’s requirement that an accrediting agency must ‘ensure’ that a college’s decisions on credit transfer are not made based on accreditation status. Accrediting officials had complained that that requirement would force them to become ‘cops’ auditing colleges’ transfer policies, and department officials say the change would eliminate that problem.”

The student loan advisers at NextStudent are helpful and knowledgeable about student loans. They are a trusted source in getting you the appropriate information about your student loan consolidation, student loan options and helping students get the college financing they need. Go to www.nextstudent.com for more information.

Be sure to tune in next Thursday for my next blog on student loan advice.

Student Loan Girl

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U.S. Education Department Set to Monitor Education Standards

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:21:00 GMT

Colleges seem to be getting hit from all angles lately. Financial aid and the offices disbursing it are being scrutinized, college accessibility is being questioned, and now the U.S. Department of Education is planning on getting tougher on college performance standards.

According to a March 28, 2007 article written by Doug Lederman titled, “Drawing A Hard Line,” that appeared in Inside Higher Ed, “U.S. Education Department officials suggested Tuesday that they would insist that new federal rules require accrediting agencies to set minimum standards of performance for the institutions they monitor to meet in terms of proving how well they educate students.”

Accrediting Agencies Come Up with Their Own Benchmarks

The Department of Education was in the middle of a three-day session regarding the accreditation changes. Lederman reported that during this session, “A group of accrediting agency officials and others drafted an alternative to proposed regulatory language unveiled late last week in which Education Department officials sought to give accreditors three options for measuring institutions’ success in educating students — two of which would force them to set minimal levels of acceptable performance, which regional accreditors (and many college officials) have traditionally considered it inappropriate for them to do.”

Additionally, he wrote of the accreditors draft, “Instead of requiring accreditors to alter their own standards for measuring student achievement in ways that would ‘set explicit federal standards for what counts as quality at institutions,’ as Judith S. Eaton of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation argued that the department’s approach would, the nonfederal negotiators suggested an alternative in which accreditors would collect information about completion and placement rates and other measures of student success as part of the institutional ‘self studies’ that are at the core of the accreditation system.”

Higher Learning Outcomes

So, right now just about every college has its own standards for success, some may see success in graduation rates, while others might see it in what types of jobs their alumni snag, still others may see success in fundraising and others in “Top College” rankings. Lederman quoted Vickie L. Schray, the Department of Education’s lead negotiator as stating, “‘What appears to be missing’ in the alternative proposal, Schray said, is the [accrediting] agency’s responsibility in the review and approval affirmatively of what the institutions are proposing.’ Without that, she suggested, the alternative won’t fly.”

According to the article, there has been no resolution on the issue of accreditation regulations, other than the U.S. Department of Education seems nonplused by suggestions and is taking a hard stance that accreditors follow their initial proposal. Click here to read that proposal: http://www.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2007/accred-proposed-1.pdf.

It is important to keep up to date on the effects of the U.S. Department of Education and news on student loans and education. What goes on in government and in your state can have a great impact on your student loans and your college education.

For all the information you need about student loans, go to www.nextstudent.com.

Student Loan Girl

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U.S. Education Department’s Official on Accreditation Leaves Job

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:06:00 GMT

According to a Jan. 29, 2007 article titled “U.S. Accreditation Official Out of a Job” written by Doug Lederman that appeared in Inside Higher Ed, John W. Barth, the director of accreditation and state liaison at the Department of Education, has transferred to a position at the Federal Student Aid Ombudsman’s office. The article said, “The department’s official stance, through a spokeswoman, was only this terse statement: ‘John Barth has accepted a new position at FSA.’ Another department official framed Barth’s decision as routine and his choice, but the available evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.”

Although the move looks routine it has raised suspicions because of its timing and its abruptness. Lederman reported, “Barth’s shift comes in the wake of some publicly visible conflict over the department’s approach to accreditation. In the wake of the report of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, the department’s top officials have pushed aggressively on a range of fronts to carry out its recommendations, particularly those that would require colleges to better measure and report how much their students learn.

Department officials have focused significant attention on accreditation as a wedge for doing that, because changes in accrediting standards — some of which department leaders believe can be accomplished without the need for new laws or rules (and therefore without the approval of Congress) — have the potential to directly influence hundreds or thousands of colleges.”

National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity

The Department of education holds a semiannual meeting “that reviews and regulates accrediting agencies,” the article said. “In the months before each meeting, the Education Department’s staff prepares a report on each accrediting group up for review, and the advisory panel uses those reports as the starting point for its own deliberations about whether to renew the group’s authority to operate. As the top career staff person (which in Washington parlance means not a political appointee) on accreditation issues, Barth oversaw those staff reviews,” Lederman reported.

More interesting, the article said that, “three accrediting agencies discovered that their staff reports had been rewritten to add new issues or significantly change the findings against them, all in ways that left them in hot water. In two cases, involving the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the American Academy of Liberal Education, the agencies were confronted with heightened requirements about how they measure student learning; in the other, the American Bar Association’s accrediting arm was told that it faced punishment if it did not alter a standard it used to ensure racial and ethnic diversity among law school student bodies.”

Changes in the Political Climate

There really is no hard evidence as to why Barth was transferred to a new position. However, with so many changes in Washington it may be due to new political pressures. Lederman reported, “The suddenness of his departure — and the fact that it came about so quietly — is widely seen as evidence that the department’s political leaders are moving as aggressively as they can, through any and all avenues available to them, to bring about the changes they want in accreditation, and in higher education generally.

‘Any administration has the legal authority to move a senior civil servant from one job to another,’ said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. ‘What causes concern in this case is the fear that someone who was tough but fair will be replaced with someone who is tough and unfair.’”

The article reported that Hartle said, “The simultaneity of this change coupled with the initiation of negotiated rulemaking before Congress has acted on reauthorization suggests that the department is very anxious to impose a new agenda on accrediting agencies.”

Accreditation ensures that institutions of higher education meet acceptable levels of quality. There are agencies that oversee accreditation and those agencies are then overseen by the U.S. Department of Education. Changes in accreditation could affect the types of federal loans for which colleges qualify, especially online institutions; therefore it is important to check a college’s accreditation before enrolling.

It is important to keep up to date on all the news regarding student loans and education.

Talk to the education financial advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Monday for my next blog on student loan issues in the news.

Student Loan Girl

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