The U.S. Education Department has created new data reports on the performance of accrediting agencies, using measures such as graduation and loan repayment rates at colleges the agencies oversee. June 21, 2016 By Paul Fain Inside higher ed.
The federal government is set to release data reports designed to help measure the performance of accrediting agencies, with metrics such as the graduation rates, debt, earnings and loan repayment rates of students who attended the colleges the accreditors oversee.
The U.S. Department of Education sent the new reports to accreditors on Monday, a couple of days before a scheduled meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the federal panel that advises the department on which accreditors deserve federal recognition.
In addition to a spreadsheet, the department created visual, easy-to-read “dashboards” for 41 regional, national and programmatic accreditors, which Inside Higher Ed obtained (see below for an example and click here for the full report).
The release isn’t a surprise. NACIQI requested the data last year as part of the panel’s project to develop a “more systematic approach to considering student achievement and other outcome and performance metrics in the hearings for agencies that come before it.”
But that request came amid a sustained push by the Obama administration for accreditors to take a more aggressive consumer protection role, with a focus on student outcomes and more scrutiny for troubled colleges.
Accreditors also are on edge because the department last week recommended that NACIQI drop its recognition of a national accreditor — the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which oversees roughly 245 institutions, many of them for-profits. That extraordinary decision set the table for a dramatic meeting this week, which will feature consumer advocates among dozens of scheduled speakers.
The visual reports in many ways resemble the department’s College Scorecard, which gives consumers a broad range of data about the performance of colleges. And while students and their families are unlikely to use the new charts to keep tabs on accreditors, policy makers and NACIQI probably will consult them when weighing in on whether accreditors have been adequate stewards of federal financial aid.
The data also could be a tool to compare accreditors against each other, which the department has said should be part of gauging the agencies’ effectiveness.
For example, the federal database includes the number of institutions overseen by each accreditor where less than 40 percent of students have begun to pay down their student loan principal after three years. ……… The complete message can be found here.
‘Shortening the Leash’
Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress and a former official at the department, has been a prominent critic of ACICS’s approach to oversight and of the accreditation process in general, including the agencies’ “highly uneven sanctions,” which he helped document in a newly released report.
“It’s a good starting point,” Miller said of the department’s data reports. But he cautioned that the numbers would not be enough to decide whether or not to renew an accreditor’s federal recognition. “You can’t make the decision on data alone,” he said.
The metrics for graduates’ earnings and student loan repayment rates are particularly helpful, said Miller. Graduation rates are limited, he said, in part because the report lumps all institutions together, rather than breaking out the data based on the characteristics of institutions and academic programs, such as by separating community colleges from four-year institutions.
Accrediting agency officials also raised concerns about the federal data’s limitations. On a call the department hosted Monday with accreditors, some officials said they were frustrated with inaccuracies in the data and argued for the need for context to explain the numbers. ………..