Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality David D. Dill and Maarja Beerkens

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1 Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality David D. Dill and Maarja Beerkens Historically self-regulation has been the dominant mode for assuring academic quality in the US and the UK higher education. In the USA the academic standards of colleges and universities were supposedly assured by six regional accreditation agencies, such as the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which are voluntary organizations. In addition a number of professional associations in fields such as chemistry, law, and medicine have taken on the role of accrediting or licensing-related academic programs in their respective fields. In the UK the long tradition of university subject examinations and of external examiners was believed to assure the reputed gold standard of UK higher education. As a means of achieving the public interest, self-regulation has predictable strengths and weaknesses (Baldwin and Cave 1999). Advantages include access to greater expertise and technical knowledge that can lead to more reasonable rule making and greater voluntary compliance, lower cost to the public, and more rapid adjustment of self-regulatory rules to changing circumstances. Disadvantages include the potential for regulatory capture in which self-regulation comes to serve the private interests of the professional members rather than the interest of the public, a charge that has been made in the USA with regard the resistance of traditional academic accrediting agencies to the emergence of distance learning and/or for-profit higher education institutions. Professional self-regulation may also be insensitive to the needs of less influential but affected groups, such as students. Finally, the public accountability or transparency of self-regulation is a further source of concern. Of the many instruments of academic quality assurance to be examined in this volume arguably external examining, as conducted in the UK and some Scandinavian countries, most clearly addresses academic standards. External examiners traditionally assessed the actual performance of students on subject examinations used to award degrees in the university sector. Richard Lewis analysis of external examining in the UK provides an invaluable insight into this quality assurance instrument. External examining emerged in the early-19th-century England as a professional practice and was explicitly encouraged by the government in subsequent university charters. However, the practice was not formally regulated nor codified until, under pressure from the Thatcher government to assure academic standards, the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals published the

2 16 Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality first Code of Practice in Subsequent research revealed that only a minority of universities were following these professional standards, challenging academic assertions on the effectiveness of the practice (Warren Piper 2004). The role of external examiners has recently been given fresh impetus by changes in quality assurance arrangements introduced as a result of a UK governmental initiative. In return for the lightening of the burden on institutions through the abandonment of externally organized program review, institutions are now required to make more information publicly available including summaries of external examiners reports. Lewis analysis traces the history of external examining and discusses the relevant section of the Quality Assurance Agency s Code of Practice, which is the nearest equivalent to a national system of regulations governing the external examining system. He also discusses the ways in which the system has responded to changes that have occurred, especially the substantial growth in student numbers and the modularization of degree programs. The other primary mode of professional self-regulation voluntary academic accreditation evolved first in the USA due to the unique structure of the national academic system. Because academic accreditation has been actively advocated as a potentially valuable instrument for assuring academic quality outside the USA as well (Schwarz and Westerheijden 2004), an extended discussion of the US experience with accreditation may prove useful before introducing the voluntary professional accreditation instrument to be analyzed in this part. The US constitution does not explicitly cite education as a federal concern; therefore, authority over education has been reserved for the states. Following the founding of the Republic, the states granted charters for new colleges and universities liberally and generally adopted a laissez faire approach to coordinating and controlling higher education. By the end of the 19th century, less than a quarter of the states had adopted regulations governing educational programs or degrees and over half of the states exercised no supervision over their colleges once incorporated (Brubacher and Rudy 1968). The mobility of students across state borders and the growing diversity of admissions standards among the many new public and private institutions eventually led to educational chaos (Orlans 1975) and made clear that some new mechanism was needed to develop and enforce the definition of a college. In the 1880s preparatory school administrators and collegiate institutions voluntarily banded together in regional associations to standardize college admissions requirements and accredit secondary schools. Six regional associations were eventually formed, and over time these associations also adopted standards for the accreditation of colleges and universities. From its outset, academic accreditation was advocated as a means of addressing academic standards (Selden 1960). However, unlike external examining in the UK, the US academic accreditation has never attempted to directly assess the academic performance of students in colleges and universities. Instead the earliest accreditation standards focused on quantitative indictors of resources and inputs such as buildings, volumes in the library, and the number of faculty members with Ph.D. degrees. In response to increasing criticisms of these quantitative standards by the institutions, the accreditation approach was gradually modified in the 1930s to a

3 Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality 17 more subjective, improvement-oriented process assessing the educational mission each institution had set for itself (Selden 1960). The context for academic accreditation in the USA was dramatically altered by the federal government with the Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (Korean War GI Bill) of 1952 (Orlans 1975). This Congressional statute and succeeding legislation established that college and university eligibility for federal student aid was to be determined primarily by the six regional accrediting agencies, but also that the Commissioner of Education (now Secretary of Education) would be awarded general oversight of the accreditation agencies. In subsequent years the power of the Secretary was steadily expanded by federal statute to include authority to recommend accrediting agencies for federal recognition and to establish explicit criteria for the evaluations conducted by recognized agencies. Many have argued that this federal action effectively eliminated the voluntary nature of institutional accreditation in the USA, since no major US college or university could effectively function without the support of federal student aid funds (Ewell 2008). In the post World War II years, as mass higher education came to be seen as a strategic investment crucial to economic development, criticisms of the contribution of institutional accreditation to academic quality continued to mount (Ewell 2008). The agencies were faulted not only for their failure to examine evidence of student achievement, but also for their lack of interest in an institution s means of internal accountability the collective faculty processes for assuring academic standards (Graham et al. 1995). In response to these criticisms and increasing pressure for reform from the states and federal government, all six of the regional accreditation associations revised their standards and criteria in the period between 1984 and 1994, to place greater emphasis on student assessment practices (Nettles et al. 1998). Nonetheless, a decade later a national review by the Secretary of Education s Committee on the Future of Higher Education (United States Department of Education 2006), noting the continuing decline in US college graduation rates and the significant recent drop in the literacy scores of college graduates, renewed the call for a new national accreditation framework and reaffirmed the need for accreditation standards focused primarily on measurable academic quality outcomes rather than inputs. In sum, despite its long history, there is little empirical evidence to date that US institutional accreditation as traditionally organized has been an effective instrument for assuring academic standards. Some recent institutional accrediting initiatives, such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Educational Effectiveness Review, may offer potentially valuable new approaches, but they are still in the early stages of implementation. In addition to institutional accrediting by regional associations, voluntary specialized accrediting associations that evaluate particular programs or schools within colleges and universities have also flourished in the USA. The influence of specialized accreditation was strengthened by state-level regulations in some fields limiting eligibility for professional licensing exams to graduates of accredited programs. The state and national calls for increased attention to academic outcomes noted above also have inspired new approaches to specialized accreditation, particularly

4 18 Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality in professional accrediting agencies where the participation of practicing professionals led to greater pressure for an emphasis on academic standards (Ewell 2008). For example, the American Board of Engineering and Training (ABET) has radically shifted its process for accrediting undergraduate engineering programs from an emphasis on curricular specifications to student learning outcomes and accountability. Accredited engineering programs now must publish specific goals for student learning and measure their achievement to demonstrate how well these objectives are being met. Elaine El-Khawas analyzes one particularly innovative, specialized accrediting agency in the USA, the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC). TEAC is a voluntary agency founded in 1997 as an alternative approach to accreditation of teacher education. It combines an innovative focus on student learning and an evidence-based audit method that builds upon and extends the academic audit process first developed in the UK and adopted in a number of other countries (see the analysis by Massy in this volume). Its review process is supported by detailed protocols, well-defined visits, a strict separation between the auditor role and the summative evaluation role, and the application of scholarly standards for reliability and validity in the evaluation of quality assurance processes. Programs must meet standards that focus on student learning and its use for academic planning and improvement, but they select what evidence to use in making their claims. This approach has strengthened student assessment and helped programs gather detailed evidence that is both meaningful and useful for improvement. The discussed instruments of UK external examining as well as institutional and specialized accreditation in the USA suggest the strengths and limitations of selfregulatory approaches to assuring academic standards in mass systems of higher education, evidence consistent with the experience with self-regulation in other professional fields and industries. Without the support and authority of the state, self-regulatory instruments are likely to be erratically enforced and/or insufficiently rigorous. In the case of higher education the rapid growth of enrollments, the proliferation of subject fields, and the increasing global rivalry for academic reputation have also created a new context in which a purely self-regulatory approach to assuring academic standards appears unlikely to effectively protect the public interest. References Baldwin, R., Cave, M. (1999). Understanding regulation: Theory, strategy, and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brubacher, J. S., Rudy, W. (1968). Higher education in transition: A history of american colleges and universities, NewYork:Harper&Row. Ewell, P. T. (2008). U.S. Accreditation and the future of quality assurance. Washington DC: Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Graham, P. A., Lyman, R. W., Trow, M. (1995). Accountability of colleges and universities: An essay. New York: Columbia University, Office of the Provost.

5 Part I Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality 19 Nettles, M., Cole, J., Sharp, S. (1998). The Landscape: Tracking a subtle storm. assessment policies in higher education. Change, 30(2), Orlans, H. (1975). Private accreditation and public eligibility. Lexington, Mass. Lexington Books. Schwarz, S., & Westerheijden, D. (2004). Accreditation and evaluation in the European higher education area. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Selden, W. K. (1960). Accreditation: A struggle over standards in higher education. NewYork: Harper & Brothers. United States Department of Education (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of U.S. higher education. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education (USDOE). Warren Piper, D. J. (2004). Are professors professional? The Organisation of university examinations. London: Jessica Kingsley.