The End of a Monopoly?

Abstract

before leaving office abruptly last July on tip of President Carter's boot, HEW Secretary Joseph Califano proposed a radical change in method by which postsecondary institutions become eligible for federal student aid. In testimony submitted to Representative William Ford's Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, he recommended that eligibility rest on state authorization alonenot, as is case now, on both authorization and institutional accreditation. Among given for dropping Office of Education's reliance on accreditation were: that criteria employed by Commissioner of Education to recognize accrediting agencies derive from characteristics ''peripheral to assessment of such as agency structure, financing, and due process; that accrediting agencies assess the degree to which... [an institution] meets its own stated goals rather than externally imposed standard of quality; that many recognized agencies are superfluous for eligibility purposes; and that reliance on accreditation misleads students and their parents into believing that Federal government vouches for of an institution receiving federal funds. Though these reasons are entirely correct, they are inadequate to explain or justify recommendation, if only because they were equally correct 10 years ago. Indeed, some months earlier Ernest Boyer, then Commissioner of Education, sought merely to confine recognition to agencies accrediting institutions, to simplify criteria for recognition and ease governmental scrutiny of accrediting agencies. Resistance by staff members of Division of Eligibility and Agency Evaluation resistance that went beyond legitimate dissent to flout and lobby against policy instructions apparently helped to drive Administration to position of rejecting accreditation completely. The Council on Postsecondary Accreditation, which had supported earlier course, opposed July proposal and Ford subcommittee deferred action. The role of accreditation in determining institutional eligibility for federal student aid and in assuring institutional quality and probity re. mains a complex and troubling issue, and it has turned into one of more lively educational debates in Washington. To hear accreditors, all is as well as well can be. The dream world they inhabit would astonish Freud. HAROLD ORLANS, a senior research associate with National Academy of Public Administration Foundation in Washington, D.C., was formerly on senior staff of The Brookings Institution. He is author of Private Accreditation and Public Eligibility (Lexington) and The Effects of Federal Programs on Higher Education (Brookings). With three colleagues he wrote GI Course Approvals, a report issued by House and Senate committees on veterans' affairs.