A101 Team Why is the federal government pouring your tax dollars into poorly performing schools?
Accreditation of postsecondary institutions serves as a seal of approval to signify that a college or university will provide a high quality education to its students. However, today’s accreditation system is failing to fulfill its purpose, and oftentimes schools that receive accreditation do not deliver the education they promise. This may be, in part, because accreditation was never intended to function as a proxy for government approval, but rather was created as a system for colleges and universities to provide voluntary, peer-reviews among partner institutions. While the process was instituted to guarantee that postsecondary institutions maintained the highest standards, today, accreditation has devolved into a signifier of minimal acceptable institutional quality, and it’s questionable whether it’s succeeding at that.
The federal government got involved in the accreditation process for the first time after the passage of the G.I. Bill. For the first time in our nation’s history, federal dollars were being used to fund college educations, and acknowledging that the federal government had a responsibility to ensure that that money was being well spent, accreditation was co-opted to validate that schools receiving federal dollars were deserving of the money.
The changing objectives and standards of accreditation have corresponded with increasingly negative outcomes among students including higher tuition costs that correspond with higher rates of student debt, lower rates of degree completion, and graduates who are poorly prepared for the professional world. Yet the accreditation process hasn’t undergone any significant changes since it was first instituted. In fact, government involvement has made the system worse.
Colleges and universities can only receive federal aid if they are accredited. In an effort to protect schools from losing access to federal aid, accrediting agencies have been reluctant to sanction poor performing schools. As a result, poor performing institutions continue to operate with the full blessing of their accrediting agencies despite students’ poor educational outcomes and scant professional opportunities, with a corresponding inability to repay mounds of educational debt.
This can’t continue. The federal government can’t keep pouring student aid into poorly performing schools, and poorly performing schools can’t continue to operate unencumbered. The federal government has a fiscal responsibility to the American taxpayers to ensure that their money is invested wisely, and students have a right to know the institutions they attend will provide them with a better education and greater professional opportunities upon graduation. The current system doesn’t benefit anyone, except the institutions.
To tackle the problem, Congress has many options. For example, Congress could maintain the link between accreditation and federal aid, but simply change the accreditation process to better measure student outcomes or ensure accreditation awards signify high institutional quality. Alternatively, the federal government could stop providing loans and grants to college students, and allow the free market to deliver financial services to prospective students, the result of which would likely be falling college costs. Or, Congress could rethink the system entirely by promoting institutional risk-sharing that would change incentives for colleges and universities to keep down costs and provide lower priced course options. There are many choices for Congress to consider. The worst option is the status quo. It’s time to make the system advantage students and the American taxpayer.
