Dive Brief:
- The Obama administration has taken executive action to improve accreditation, and it has also proposed legislation to urge Congress to use its own power to make additional changes.
- According to eCampus News, the legislative proposals include allowing the U.S. Department of Education to set and enforce student outcomes standards and requiring a broader set of high-risk institutions to have teach-out plans and reserve funds to minimize the impact of abrupt closures.
- The administration also proposes requiring common language and data reporting practices from accreditors so their actions are more easily understood, while also mandating additional public reporting of accreditation documents.
Dive Insight:
The Obama administration made a handful of executive actions earlier this month, all geared toward increasing transparency in the accreditation process or strengthening oversight of accreditors. Those executive actions included requiring that more evaluation documents be made public, publishing additional metrics about accredited schools, better coordinating the accreditation process among its many actors, and changing accreditor review criteria to focus more on student outcomes. Congress is expected to take up the accreditation reform issue with its rewrite of the Higher Education Act.