Many people believe that if a college or university is accredited, that’s the equivalent of a guarantee of quality. Just as the seal of approval from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) tells consumers that an electric appliance is going to be reliable, so too with college accreditation, which supposedly tells students that a college is of good quality. At least, that’s widely thought to be true.
Like so many other things that are widely thought to be true, the belief that accreditation is a guarantee of educational quality is mistaken. Many Americans holding degrees from accredited colleges learned little or nothing of value and now struggle to repay their loans with mundane jobs that high-school kids could do. Accreditors rarely uncover academic malpractice such as the infamous “paper courses,” for which star athletes at UNC got high grades to help them remain eligible to play.
The belief that accreditation is a guarantee of educational quality is mistaken.A new study done by the Texas Public Policy Foundation should spark debate over the role of accreditation. In it, author Andrew Gillen endeavors to show which of the accrediting bodies appear to do the best job of maintaining sound educational standards and which seem to be failing in that task.