American Academy for Liberal Education: Accrediting the Educators

The Washington Post

Accrediting the Educators

The Education Department didn’t draw much attention when it quietly granted the powerful status of accreditor to a small organization called The American Academy for Liberal Education. Till now, all such accreditors have been regional organizations, such as the Middle States Association. This is the first to focus on a specific kind of program, the liberal arts college, and to offer itself as an alternative certifying mechanism for schools that may wish to show they excel in such a field. It’s a small move, and the effects are likely to be minor. But the appearance of such new groups and - more important, the readiness of the Education Department to embrace one -hints at larger battles on this issue.

The past few years have seen several fights over accreditation agencies as political divisions have increased on the question of what constitutes quality and legitimacy in higher education - and by extension what’s legitimate for accreditors to require. Accrediting agencies are in an odd position: gatekeepers for large sums of government money (since such aid can flow only to “accredited” institutions) but themselves not part of the government. That has meant an absence of close supervision, with a resulting wide variety of what, if anything, colleges required for a bachelor’s degree and what students and their bill-paying parents could expect in return for tuition.

Such regional organizations as the Middle States Association have been responsible for giving the seal of approval to a broad spectrum of schools rather than seeking to hold them to any particular model. The newly accredited academy is thus a real departure. Its founders, who include such big-name professors as Columbia’s Jacques Barzun and Harvard’s E. 0. Wilson, want to offer an accreditation with a more specific and prestigious meaning to liberal arts institutions that offer what the academy considers real teaching and a core curriculum. In a statement, the Washington-based group expresses concern about the prevalence of remedial courses on campus and says schools that opt for its accreditation will be held to standards that include contact with senior faculty, math and science requirements and “emphasis on substantive learning as well as cognitive development.”

The group declares it has no connection with the politically tainted fight of a few years ago, when a few schools challenged the Middle States accreditors over standards they felt were slanted - and that in fact overstepped educational questions in mandating levels of “diversity” and the like. The liberal arts group is more of an add-on, an optional gold star from the experts, luckily free of wider disputes over what can be called a college education.