Posted on 10/11/2016 11:30:57 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
The good news is that the Left has noticed what a scam college accreditation is. The bad news: They want the federal government to take it over.
"Accreditors are self-regulating membership organizations," Ben Miller, David Bergeron and Carmel Martin write in a report released this month by the Center for American Progress (CAP). "This means that agencies' revenue comes almost entirely from dues and fees paid by the institutions they oversee."
"This includes annual sustaining fees, as well as payments for specific functions such as an initial review to judge if an institution meets standards for approval or special visits if an institution faces a sanction. This financial arrangement creates potential conflicts of interest, where an accreditor is both a membership organization beholden to the institutions that pay it for its continued existence but also tasked with overseeing these schools and evaluating their quality. Terminating a member institution's approval thus results in lost revenue for the accreditation agency."
True enough, as, for example, the venerable economist Richard Vedder has been pointing out for years. Yet and still, the CAP solution is to, ultimately, "Put the federal government in charge of verifying, enforcing, and judging the effectiveness of outcome measures, as well as selecting third-party standard setters."
They unveiled this proposal at their headquarters with an Undersecretary of the Obama Administration's Department of Education in attendance on October 6, 2016.
Here’s a thought: Wouldn't it be interesting if they got their wish and Trump got elected and plastered his name, image and ethos all over their beloved program and every university he could get around to remodeling?
Yes, but that is probably intentional on their part. They create the disease, then they sell you the “cure”, which is worse than the disease, and which was their real goal all along.
I was a professor at a university with a unionized faculty.
The department of business administration was built by the department of business education faculty who were excellent and gave it a fabulous reputation. The education department faculty were excellent in their knowledge base and teaching skills.
The university decided to go for accreditation which required a percentage of the faculty to have PhD’s in their area of expertise. The DED, Doctorate in Education held by the business education faculty did not count toward accreditation for the school of business administration.
Due to the unionized pay structure, high demand business faculty were locked to the same pay scale of the other departments where there was an excess of available faculty.
The end result was that the only PhD’s the university could hire at the pay they were offering were reject faculty who were denied tenure at several other universities.
End result, the business administration program that had been very successful took a turn for the worse as a result of going for accreditation.
It is very true that many individuals who can’t make it in the real world stay in education for the advanced degrees and are pure academic with no grasp of reality.
President Thomas Jefferson had not only officially indicated that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes, but had also pointed out that the states would need to amend the Constitution to give the feds the specific power to do so.
“The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphases added].” —Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
So Trump and patriots already have a big mess to clean up with repsect to kicking the unconstitutionally big federal government out of intrastate schools.
>>>Here’s my problem with the Left: They often diagnose problems correctly, then come up with “solutions” that make them worse.<<<
The really bad part is that when they make it worse, they just double down on their solution. I mean look at the schools. They keep saying more money and smaller class sizes is the answer. But the schools don’t really improve. And worse, when you compare to say Korea where they have larger class sizes and top notch test scores, they scowl and say that doesn’t prove anything.
So liberals, imho use problems as a means to an end. Which is more statist control. You know, the filthy unwashed masses need to have them be in charge.
Bump! Excellent points.
As a college professor myself, I notice that accreditation has become the last institutional “chicken coop” that the “foxes” (unions) had neglected.
College and university teacher unions seek to eliminate this last “fire wall” allowing outside voices and transparency into assessing and monitoring higher education.
Accreditation teams visiting our campuses have been composed of OTHER FACULTY & ADMINISTRATORS, and now the unions want ONLY THEIR APPOINTEES on these teams. So much for any public input, outside voices, or accountability..... it’s all & only leftism, all the time from here on in. Universities and community colleges like mine will be reduced to low standard indoctrination centers unless private 2-and 4- year campuses start emerging and competing with these overpriced, corrupt, ‘academic’ money pits.
If an accountant, engineer, doctor or lawyer can only practice professionally by attending an accredited school, then the accreditation process is a great concern for them. For anyone else, I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.
Pay to play wasn’t invented by the Clintonistas.
PCI certification works the same way.
I’ve noticed that even the professional exams have been dumbed down. I have quite a few professional certifications from back in the late 1970’s & early 1980’s. I’ve looked at the more recent exams and they have shortened the test length and made the exams easier.
It’s easy for me to pass exams, but that doesn’t mean I know the material.
As it related to medical licenses, the older generations were grandfathered and do not need to retake exams to remain Board Certified. We are heading to a crisis point where many of the grandfathered DR’s are not retiring due to age and many of the younger DR’s are retiring early as they do not want to study and pass the exams to Re-Certify.
Dr’s prior to the early 1980’s were grandfathered in many specialties while those graduating med school after that must re-certify every 10 years by passing a comprehensive exam in their specialty.
Thus if a DR was 22 when graduating undergrad, 26 when graduating med school and 30 when finishing residency, they retake exams at ages 40 and 50. By the time they reach 60... they decide to retire.... These exams are really hard, especially for older DR’s who need to learn all the new discoveries.
When you add to this all the Obamacare record keeping nightmares, the higher income taxes, and the lower pay for performing medical procedures... it’s a no brainer.
This will be just another way for the liberal government workers to have even more control over academia. They already are using Title IX to force colleges to set up kangaroo courts to judge male students accused of sexual assaults, rather than turning the case over to local police. Now liberal bureaucrats will be able to force Christian colleges to be even more compliant with liberal desires.
because they think academe is too conservative.
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