New Techniques for Accreditation Today

Abstract

Quality improvement initiatives that were developed in the field of business have been adapted by many educational institutions (Alstete 1996a). Techniques such as the balanced scorecard, benchmarking, key performance indicators, total quality management, business process reengineering, management by objectives, zero-based budgeting, and other techniques have been and are currently being used by postsecondary institutions today to help address the demands for continuous improvement. While the original purposes of higher education accreditation evolved during the twentieth century to meet the changing needs of the public, there were also tremendous increases in the number, size, and diversity of colleges and universities. Demands for increased accountability in higher education escalated in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the costs for government regulation and reporting of many college functions increased. These increased accreditation costs for institutions of higher education, along with general economic inflationary strains on institutions, forced an offloading of these expenses to students. The results yielded an increased scrutiny by the public and others of the answerability and the function of accreditation of colleges and universities. One example was a report in 1979 by COPA that called for “accreditation teams to begin to look for evidence of student achievement (outcomes) used for the award of credit and degrees, and make judgments about the quality of the institution in light of the adjudged student achievement compared with degrees awarded” (Casey and Harris 1979, p. 25).