The College Quality Fight

Colleges have won their battle with the Bush administration over accreditation reform. After two years of being chastised and pressured to better report on student learning, and then being threatened with new federal accreditation regulations, colleges turned to their longtime allies in Congress and found support. The Higher Education Act reauthorization bills, as passed by the Senate and the House, would prevent the Department of Education from issuing regulations on the accreditation process.

But while this is a victory for colleges, they would be wrong to think that the college quality issue has been put to rest. The heart of the matter—meaningful accountability for higher education institutions who receive billions of dollars in federal money—still has yet to be addressed. While the Bush administration failed to pursue a politically viable process for reform, the need for stronger accountability still remains highly visible to many Members of Congress, and likely future members of the next Department of Education.

Where Spellings and Bush Went Wrong

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings began federal-level discussions on college quality through the work of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 2006. One of the Commission’s goals was to determine how to increase transparency in higher education and give students and families more information about college in general. Spellings wanted to make higher education more "consumer-friendly" and force colleges to prove to potential students that their schools are worth the investment.

These are all noble goals, and ones around which the Department of Education possibly could have developed a bipartisan consensus. As college tuition skyrockets, Members of Congress are becoming more and more concerned about how the federal government can ensure that its investment in higher education isn’t being wasted. And addressing college quality is an appealing course of action, because (a) accountability and fiscal responsibility are easy concepts to sell; (b) constituents would love more and better information on colleges; and (c) improving higher education results can be linked to a slew of other issues: international competitiveness, loss of jobs in a declining economy, etc, etc.

But the Bush administration attempted to force accreditors to take student outcomes into account when making accreditation decisions. Specifically, Secretary Spellings tried to do so through the federal regulatory process, and thus, without the input of Congress. That proved to be a political error, allowing those opposed to accreditation reform to argue process over substance and giving cover to those substantively uneasy with the entire idea.

In terms of substance, Republicans have always struggled with the tension between government accountability and intervention. If the federal government is going to make large investment in something, then it should be able to monitor the results of this investment. But monitoring results tends to require federal intrusion into the localized management of education—the enemy of free-market, small-government Republicans.

So many Republicans in Congress were not thrilled with administration’s attempts to press accountability on higher education (and were likely a little wary after they were reprimanded by their constituents for No Child Left Behind’s federal involvement). In response, the Bush administration toned down its rhetoric on accreditation over time (Spellings told the federal accreditation advisory panel in December: "Let me repeat: No one-size-fits-all measures, no standardized tests.") But it was still left fighting that battle by itself, and it lost. Too little compromise and too late.

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