Council for Higher Education Accreditation

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Logo of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) is a United States organization of degree-granting colleges and universities. It identifies its purposes to include providing national advocacy for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation and providing scrutiny and certification of the quality of higher education accrediting organizations, including regional, faith-based, private career, and programmatic accrediting organizations.[1]

CHEA counts approximately 3,000 academic institutions as members and currently recognizes 59 accrediting organizations.[2]

Contents

[edit] History

Established in 1996, CHEA is the successor to several earlier national nongovernmental associations formed to coordinate the U.S. accreditation process. In 1974, the Federation of Regional Accrediting Commissions of Higher Education (FRACHE; an association of regional accreditors) and the National Commission on Accrediting (an association of specialized and national accreditation agencies) had merged to form the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA), which had the purpose of promoting and ensuring the quality of accreditation.

COPA served this function until 1993, when it was dissolved due to tensions among the different types of accreditation agencies that formed its membership as a result of the worsening situation for higher education in the 1980s and 1990s.[3] Problems with tuition increases, scandals, and doubts about the value of postsecondary higher education plagued the sector as a whole.[4]

Congressional investigations of the soaring student loan defaults and student aid abuses, most notably those conducted by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, were highly critical of the laxity of accreditation and accreditation processes.[5][6]

As a consequence, the 1992 amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965 included Program Integrity provisions designed to strengthen the gatekeeping triad for Title IV student loan guarantees and financial aid (i.e., state licensing bodies, accreditation associations, and Federal government). Viewed with special alarm by the higher education community was the establishment of SPREs (State Postsecondary Review Entities), which were given accrediting powers under special conditions. "When campus lobbyists heard about the legislation and realized that non-governmental accreditation was being replaced by a federal-state agency evaluation of institutions, including assessments of academic quality never before carried out by government, they 'went apoplectic', as one observer put it." [7]

The result was that early in 1993, the regional accreditors voted to leave COPA, indicating their dissatisfaction with COPA's political representation on Capitol Hill, which was widely viewed as ineffective at the time, particularly in regard to the new HEA legislation establishing the SPREs. In April 1993, COPA voted to disband itself by the end of the year.[8]

Preliminary work by the National Policy Board on Higher Education Institutional Accreditation (NPB), and other groups laid the ground-work for a national successor to COPA. Among their concerns were establishing a more grassroots membership, billing and fees, and advisory role of the accrediting associations, and most importantly, improving the public image of accrediting and their ability to lobby the Federal government on accreditation.[9][10][11]

CHEA's immediate predecessor was the Council for Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation (CORPA), which was formed following the dissolution of COPA.[12] CHEA grandfathered in those accrediting associations recognized by COPA, provided more than half the institutions that they accredited granted degrees.[13]

Most recently, CHEA is known for its strong public opposition to various accreditation reform efforts by the U.S. Department of Education [14], and in particular, the negative reaction of Judith S. Eaton, CHEA's president, to recommendations by Secretary Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education. [15] [16]

CHEA faces substantial public education challenges, including helping the public to better understand accreditation in U.S., [17] and to distinguish between the recognition of accrediting agencies conducted by the U.S. Secretary of Education, and those recognized by private nongovernmental associations, such as CHEA. [18]

CHEA recognition of accreditors differs from recognition by the U.S. Secretary of Education because it does not play a role in the disbursement of Title IV (HEA) student financial aid and loan guarantees, whereas accreditor recognition by the U.S. Department of Education is required for Title IV eligibility. [19]

CHEA wishes to prevent European-style ministry-based administration of higher education accreditation in the U.S.[20] [21] The association is based in Washington, DC.

[edit] Information resources

Each accreditor recognized by CHEA is independent, which means that accreditation requirements vary from group to group. CHEA maintains a website that contains a searchable database to check accreditation status of recognized accreditation agencies, accredited schools, or schools currently in the process of getting accreditation (i.e., "candidates" for accreditation).[22] CHEA's "user agreement for publications of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation" states that it does not guarantee that all accredited schools are listed in the database.

[edit] Board of Directors

John D. Wiley, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the chairman of the CHEA Board of Directors. A list of current CHEA board members is available at the CHEA web site.[23]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ CHEA At a Glance, 2006
  2. ^ CHEA website, accessed January 31, 2010
  3. ^ Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001), Chapter 3, The Mounting Threat to Higher Education's Pragmatic and Moral Legitimacy, pages 33-43.
  4. ^ Constance Ewing Cook, Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy (1998), Erosion of Public Confidence, pages 34-44.
  5. ^ U.S. Senate, Abuses in Federal Student Aid Programs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, May 17, 1991. Report 102-58.[1]
  6. ^ Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001), page 182
  7. ^ Constance Ewing Cook, Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy (1998), The Story of the State Postsecondary Review Entities, pages 44-51. The quote here is from page 47.
  8. ^ Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001), Chapter 3, and page 39.
  9. ^ Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001)
  10. ^ Robert Atwell, James Rogers, Independence, Accreditation, and the Public Interest, Special Report on Accreditation, October 1994, National Policy Board on Higher Education Institutional Accreditation (NBP). Available at ERIC [2].
  11. ^ Jane Wellman, Recognition of Accreditation Organizations: A Comparison of Policy & Practice of Voluntary Accreditation and The United States Department of Education], CHEA, January 1998.
  12. ^ Jane Wellman, [3] Recognition of Accreditation Organizations: A Comparison of Policy & Practice of Voluntary Accreditation and The United States Department of Education], CHEA, January 1998.
  13. ^ Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001), page 183.
  14. ^ Council for Higher Education Accreditation, Resolution of the Board of Directors, May 7, 2007, Washington D. C. [4]
  15. ^ Judith S. Eaton, The Future of Accreditation? March 24, 2008, Inside Higher Ed[5]
  16. ^ Doug Lederman, Dissent and a Disputed Phone Call April 27, 2007, Inside Higher Ed, [6]
  17. ^ CHEA website [www.chea.org]
  18. ^ Jane Wellman, Recognition of Accreditation Organizations: A Comparison of Policy & Practice of Voluntary Accreditation and The United States Department of Education, January 1998, pages 3 - 4. [7] See also, Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001), page 181.
  19. ^ Vickie Schray, Assuring Quality in Higher Education: Key Issues and Questions for Changing Accreditation in the United States, Issue Paper, The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education (Fourth in a series of Issue Papers released at the request of Chairman Charles Miller to inform the work of the Commission), U.S. Department of Education, Washington D.C. [8]page 3
  20. ^ Judith S. Eaton, The Future of Accreditation? March 24, 2008, InsideHigherEd.com[9]
  21. ^ Council for Higher Education Accreditation, Resolution of the Board of Directors, May 7, 2007, Washington D. C. http://cos.edu/ImageUpload_Links/CHEA_Board_of_Directors_Resolution.pdf]
  22. ^ "CHEA Database of Institutions and Programs Accredited by Recognized US Accrediting Organizations". Council for Higher Education Accreditation. http://www.chea.org/search/search.asp. Retrieved 2006-10-01.  (You must accept the license agreement to see the source text.)
  23. ^ Council for Higher Education Accreditation Board of Directors

[edit] External links

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