The first meeting of the College Music Society Music In Higher Education Committee took place on Friday, November 16, 2007, at 7:30 a.m. in the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah

http://cmsmihe.wordpress.com

Committee Members:

Laurence Kaptain, Shenandoah Conservatory, Chair

Sara Adams, Madisonville Community College

Nancy Cochran, Southern Methodist University

Miranda Crispin, Vincennes University

David Myers, Georgia State University

Robert Peavler, Indiana University Pennsylvania (Absent)

James Shrader, Valdosta State University

Jeffrey Stannard, Lawrence Conservatory

Betty Anne Younker, University of Michigan

The Committee Mission was reaffirmed:

The mission of the College Music Society’s (CMS) Committee on Music in Higher Education is to; (1) provide liaison between music associations with higher education associations, (2) convey the essential need for a communications plan that demonstrates the success of music programs in higher education, (3) articulate the changing roles of music units, and (4) advocate for maintaining the artistic and educational integrity of music programs.

Committee goals identified at meeting:

Create an action plan for two areas of focus using SMART goals:

Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Relevant, Results-Oriented, Timely, Time-bound

Meet 2-3 times between November 2007 and August 2008.

Continue discussion online through the committee blog. (http://cmsmihe.wordpress.com) and a special interactive networkling site being established on ning.com.

Topics of discussion at this meeting

1.    The need for refined assessment, communication, and evaluation in order to demonstrate value of music units.

2.    The need to design guidelines to maintain integrity of our units while showing our value.

3.    The difficulty of large research schools in attaining necessary budget and attention for music units.

4.    Arts programs are not always successful in conveying their value/worth in a way that is palatable to administration.

5.    Music areas struggle to defend the necessity of music courses in general education.

6.    The difficulty of presenting measurable, visible outcomes.

7.    Music units are self-conscious about their role in academy and not always able to translate what they do to researchers and administration.

8.    The struggle of making work transparent in a way that demonstrated worth/value to higher education and making programs as visible as possible.

9.    The effect of the business model on academia as it becomes widespread in assessment and accreditation standards.

10. The need to be proactive in demonstrating how we (music units) are similar to other programs and balancing this with talking in a direct way with how we are unique.

11. Using the very public face of music units as leverage. (Example that many donors enjoy attending concerts, not watching chemistry experiments.)

12. Learning to use the necessary jargon and to educate peers, assessment bodies, etc… without changing what we do.

13. The need to value this process in our own review/evaluation of faculty so that faculty and students are encouraged to embed accessible assessment and evaluation in our curricula.

14. Teaching the processes of review, evaluation, and community involvement by example and embedding them into our programs.

15. Three (intrinsically linked) assessment areas; (1) Student/Teaching Assessment, (2) Faculty Assessment (as in for promotion/tenure), and (3) Program Assessment (subsumes areas 1 and 2).

16. The concern that peer evaluation is on the books but not being practiced.

17. Using Peter Selden’s work on portfolios as a reference. Online chat with Selden?

18. Teaching/facilitating student’s self-reflection. (Students often making decisions in search of teacher approval.)

19. Blogs are on the rise for online discussion and courses (rather than Blackboard).

20. Using www.ning.com for courses. Private blog/social networking site that allows students to see each other’s work. The observation was made that student writing improves when their peers see their work.

21. Valdosta Symphony Orchestra website uses a blog to solicit reviews from concert attendees. Roughly 1,000 unique visitors to site to date. Used to track data and connect with community. (http://valdostasymphonyorchestra.blogspot.com/)

22. Using the Cultural Belief Model and Brand Identity (attach or paste diagrams below) to inform others of the committee’s purpose.

23. The question of community engagement with regard to the CMS MIHE Committee and our music units need examination in the context of higher education.

24. Committee members will gather successful models that can be used in crafting our presentation of programs to administration and catalogue them on the CMS MIHE blog.

25. The committee determines its own mission and responsibility to the CMS.

26. Changing societal needs are dictating new directions in music units and community outreach.

27. Students are entering music schools with a very entrepreneurial interest in music. They are often less focused on large ensemble participation and are looking for alternative experiences. Student too often seeks study in music education music education but do not necessarily look at teaching as a career.

Respectfully submitted,

Laurence Kaptain, Shenandoah Conservatory, Chair

This committee is comprised of collegiate music faculty who are interested in improving student success, and join in the national conversation of individuals and organizations working with best practices in advancing learning and creativity. This task force will explore concepts and synergies of organizations and initiatives such as; The CASTL Higher Education program of the Carnegie Foundation, Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) developed by CAE with the RAND Corporation, NSSE, AGLS, POD, NASM, and others.

Other topics of interest may include accreditation, the use of adjunct faculty, transfer and articulation, developing academic and artistic standards, and other items to help advance the profession.

The membership of this committee includes:

Sara B. Adams-Madisonville Community College

Nancy Cochran-Southern Methodist University

Miranda Crispin-Vincennes University

Laurence Kaptain-Shenandoah Conservatory (Chair)

David Myers-Georgia State University (Associate Chair)

Robert Peavler-Indiana University of Pennsylvania

James Shrader-Valdosta State University

Jeffrey M. Stannard-Lawrence Conservatory

Betty Anne Younker-University of Michigan

May 22, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

The basic message of this letter is that preserving the fundamental values underlying the work of NASM and the other arts accrediting associations must guide our next steps as the policy struggle over accreditation continues. Please read on to find out why, and why understanding this issue is important to you and your institution.

This is the eleventh and last of the briefing letters in this series. A common theme in these letters has been distinctions and commonalities among parts and wholes. In each letter, we have addressed a major issue in higher education and accreditation policy. Each is a part of a larger whole. The parts and the wholes that we have described are interacting to produce proposals and counter-proposals that are featured in a series of events: hearings, negotiations, regulation writing, legislative action, and so forth, all associated with federal law and policy affecting higher education. Press reports normally emphasize what happened in specific events. However, what happens overall is deeply influenced by various sets of ideas and values. Federal accreditation policies and debates about them reflect values and belief system differences that are deep below the surface.

The values underlying arts accreditation as developed by NASM and its arts counterparts are codified in several long-standing documents. “A Philosophy of Accreditation in the Arts Disciplines” and our “Code of Good Practice for the Accreditation work of NASM” are two primary examples. The legal organizational documents of the association, its membership standards, and its procedures for institutional reviews all reflect the values held and developed by member institutions of the association and the association itself during decades of effort. These values are consistent with those of most other reputable accrediting organizations.

Discussions about these values have permeated this series of briefing letters. Some of the most important are consistent with many of those critical and central to the operation of the government of the United States. These include a relationship between community standards and individual freedom that favors individual freedom, consent of the governed, public participation in the formation of standards and policies, and mutual responsibility not one way accountability. Checks and balances are built into all systems and processes. There are separations of powers. There is the concept that individuals and institutions can be a part of something but not under it. Powers are limited and operations are conducted on rule of law principles.

These and other values about powers are important because they normally produce an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual support that facilitates local advancement and healthy competition. But in NASM accreditation, all of these philosophical, organizational, and operational values are used to keep the best possible focus on a body of content, in our case music. The values we have been describing could hardly be more conducive to or consistent with the nature of work in the arts, which is always playing out and revealing a magnificent tension between structure and freedom. Our discipline constantly teaches us about distinctions and relationships between content and process. We know in our souls that process or technique alone is never enough. We know a great deal about the conditions necessary for creativity and innovation, and thus we are reluctant to embrace values that harm those conditions. We recognize that our fields are more like farms than factories. We tend our territory with the best stewardship we can muster, and we do so with faith that such an approach will continue to produce outstanding results, as it always has over time. Values help us to consider imperfections in context. We know how to reach for perfection in non-destructive ways. It is not natural for us to use the existence of imperfection to deny what is obviously good, right, or true in an overall sense. We are able to identify possibilities and work for improvement sensibly. We don’t use the fact that improvement is possible as a basis for saying that everything done previously was wrong. In many ways, being centered on our content humbles us. When we work with our field in all its fullness, we never face a purely technical exercise, and never have a complete or final answer. Our bottom line moves as we work toward it.

In addition to the values and perspectives just mentioned, we embrace many associated with service to others, including the public, government, and the broader academic community. Helping students gain a better education is central. Enabling systems of mobility, providing information to the public, and serving governmental needs with professional analysis reflect values of professional and public service. Volunteerism and expert peer review also describe values critical to the operation of traditional accreditation.

In providing this partial list of values and perspectives, there is no intent to imply that the accreditation system operates perfectly, or that in every instance it satisfies every expectation. However, the policy struggle that all of higher education is in now is not about incidents or flaws in the operation of the accreditation system that occur from time to time, even those that are catalysts for adjustments to make the system work better. What we are confronted with now is a fundamental attack on basic values. Results of the struggle will have a serious impact on the extent to which institutions of higher education remain as free and independent as they are today, especially with regard to academic matters. The overall goal of the reformers is not to improve accreditation, but to change its meaning. One goal is to remove its independence and make it an arm of the federal state, at least for those accrediting agencies that serve a federal purpose by providing one criterion necessary for various connections to federal funding. The accreditation organizations in this category cover almost every institution in the United States.

For reasons we have shown in this set of briefing letters, many of the proposals for change would remove many of the features that have enabled the strength of American higher education to grow. It is as though the reformers believe that higher education is a small set of factories turning out a set of interchangeable, easily measurable, and comparable products, while in reality it is a huge system of farms that grows thousands of different products in hundreds of fields, where each field requires high levels of specialist knowledge to grow and evaluate anything at all. The reformers’ goal is centralization, a major change in power distribution arrangements that reduce the authority, freedom, and independence of local institutions.

When looking at this situation from the perspective of a local institution, it is extremely important to separate (a) views about the way accreditation operates under its values, and (b) views about the importance of the values underlying accreditation. If the latter are replaced by new, often-opposite views imposed and linked to federal funding, local institutions will lose significant control or influence over the criteria or procedures used to evaluate them, especially with regard to academic matters. In many ways, it will not matter whether an institution is famous, heavily endowed, or productive. Centralization-driven values will do their usually destructive work. And so, in these circumstances, it is imprudent to be distracted away from larger strategic questions by imperfections any of us see in institutions, accrediting organizations, or accreditation actions. Imperfections will always be with us. As we address them, we need to take extreme care with the means we choose. The larger and critical strategic question concerns the values underlying the systems we use to deal with imperfections, to debate issues, to make improvements, and to tend the fields of specialized endeavor to the benefit of our nation and the world.

What does this values struggle mean to NASM? The full answer to that question cannot be known or predicted at this time. In the recent past, two wise friends who are good at formulating ideas made statements that I find useful. First, obsession with assessment and rankings is an indicator that a society or group has lost its vision for advancement in terms of content. Second, the world we have known seems to be shattering, at least in some ways. It is worth pondering seriously the extent to which the obsession with assessment is one of the shattering forces. To the extent that these observations have complete or partial utility, they provide an interesting background for considering the values struggle question.

By their very nature, the arts disciplines use assessment continuously, at least as much as any other field of endeavor. But the arts cannot use the artistic mode of thought to full advantage, fulfill their various functions, or focus on the creative or the visionary if those who create and produce them are focused on assessment alone; the same applies to arts programs in higher education. Indeed, in most cases, assessment is calibrated against particular visions or goals, and not the reverse. And what about shattering? Do we really want all of the intangible and tangible resources that enable us to pursue the arts and the preparation of future arts professionals to be the subject of a shattering force? We must ask ourselves where we would be, and where we will be, if the basic values associated with traditional accreditation described earlier in this letter and in the previous briefing letters are denied power to influence evaluation or serve as the conceptual basis for the relationship between institutions and government. We may be interested in improvements, new directions, the incorporation of new ideas and possibilities, and so forth, but are we truly interested in shattering?

NASM has four functions: accreditation, statistical services, professional development of music executives, and policy analysis. The term accreditation in the NASM context encompasses relationships among a set of values, a consensus-based set of operational rules and standards, and an expertise- and judgment-based peer review system. The values are the key to success in everything else. We have the lessons of history to teach us what happens when these values are not present or when they are abandoned. Our commitment to our disciplines, our students, the public, and ourselves necessitate retaining these values as the basis for our work with each other, and as the basis for constant improvement in what we do.

These letters make no argument for stasis, but rather note that wise individuals and groups make the right decisions about what should change and what should not. For example, as a number of people have said in different ways, the wise do not trade freedom for security because if they do, eventually they will lose both freedom and security. They do not allow what is happening on the surface to corrode their understanding of what is fundamental to their success. In other words, they understand that if they want freedom and security for themselves, they must work with others to ensure that freedom and security are provided to all.

NASM has been operating since 1924. Its values have enabled it to serve the growth and development of music and the other arts in higher education in so many ways that no individual or even an extensive research project could reveal them all. Of course, many people have worked to create this result. But the most important decision underlying all of this service and success, including the ability to see and act on the need for improvement are the decisions to embrace and infuse a set of values that enable all else.

Whatever happens in the larger public policy arena, or what specific decisions are taken at the federal level, there is a sense of transcending commitment to these values among the members, elected officers, and staff of the association One visionary focus is our discipline, its connections with other disciplines, and our service to others through that discipline. We have discipline-centered visions that we wish to pursue individually and institutionally. Another is our students. A third is the relationships between students and our discipline. The values and operations of NASM exist to support the realization of such visions and to protect the conceptual framework conducive to freedom in the development and pursuit of efforts at the local level. Our time tested values and the principles derived from them are the base from which we work to make wise decisions in the days and years ahead.

As the next period unfolds, our values and principles must be our anchor as we do whatever we can to ensure that those values inform relationships among accreditation, higher education, and the federal government. To paraphrase a former U.S. President, we must make sure that what is wrong about America is corrected with what is right about America. The same formulation applies to the field of music, NASM, and American higher education. None of us knows when, if, or how our values and principles will be challenged more than they already are, but whatever happens, it is important to be prepared, particularly in the sense of thinking about the ideas that provide a foundation for what we are doing and enable it in an overall sense to be successful. It is for this and a number of other reasons that the officers of the arts accrediting associations asked me to communicate with you during this past semester. A deeper understanding of our conceptual foundations and their meanings for policy has never been more important.

Thank you for your continuing and thoughtful consideration and for the contribution you and your colleagues make to the growth and development of the future of music.

Best wishes,

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director

May 14, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

The basic message of this letter is that faulty analyses, wrong judgments, and self-deceptions about the sources, natures, and purposes of improvement and innovation pose dangers to higher education and thus to our nation’s future potential. Please read on to find out why, and why understanding these issues is important for you and your institution.

Throughout this series of briefing letters we have been reviewing the fundamental ideas that have shaped accreditation policy and practice in the United States. These basic ideas include relationships among the separate responsibilities of accreditation, institutions and programs, and the federal government. In considering these relationships, we have noted a central truth: the fundamental work of higher education is accomplished by people in institutions and programs, not elsewhere.

This concept of local responsibility and control is consistent with two principal functions of accreditation reviews: compliance with standards and improvement. The standards portion addresses the relationship of what the institution is and does to community-wide agreements about what is necessary. The improvements portion may involve changes that produce compliance, but far more typically is associated with specific efforts of specific institutions and programs to develop in terms they set for themselves. Clearly, accreditation’s traditional approach favors individual and local knowledge and initiative, and trusts local development of the relationships among what standards require and enable and what each institution does.

Such an approach also enables accreditation to be useful at all stages of development. No matter how advanced an institution or program, there is usually a strong desire to improve. Looking back over just the last 50 years, it is obvious what this passion for improvement has wrought in the arts in higher education and in other disciplines as well. Achievement has been fostered by principles worked out in systems that favor freedom and local control. The accreditation system, traditionally conceived, is a servant of this local control. It stays within boundaries demarcated by published standards, policies, and procedures. Because these standards boundaries are maintained, accreditation reviews, if used appropriately, can play an analytic and catalytic role in helping each institution improve from its current base. When functioning properly, accreditation works productively with the distinction between what is necessary and what is desirable. Because what is necessary is kept within bounds, local decision makers remain free to create on all other parameters.

Where does improvement start? Here is one answer: wanting something specific to be better, creating an idea or approach that truly is better, and developing the means for effective realization. Most improvement begins with a comprehensive and realistic understanding of current situations and conditions, including the fundamental ideas underlying what is happening on the surface.

If an understanding of current conditions, situations, and foundational concepts is a central basis for making wise judgments about improvements, and if local conditions vary significantly, it seems only logical to conclude that improvement is fundamentally a local matter, once basic requirements are met. In other words, if we want to continue to have a higher education system that favors local control and initiative, we will be extremely cautious about any idea that promises to achieve improvement through greater centralization of powers to impose detailed, common definitions of improvement.

What about innovation? Let us begin by setting higher criteria for use of the word than is usual in most of today’s discourse. Innovation means creating something truly new and different, and this means doing so for the very first time. Therefore, every new thing or every change is not necessarily an innovation. Indeed, true innovation is rare. Many in our society are pretending that innovation is common when it is not. And many seem to believe that innovation can be mandated in general or created on command. But to try to mandate something that occurs rarely is to invite falsehood and deception, and particularly self-deception. Creativity is ubiquitous, innovation is not.

Of course, innovation can be nurtured by encouraging conditions that promote individual creativity and initiative. There is a strong relationship between freedom and innovation; there are strong relationships among freedom, innovation, creativity, and local initiative.

What about the relationships among innovation, creativity, and consensus-based accreditation standards that constitute frameworks for local action? Clearly, accreditation can accommodate innovations and creativity within such frameworks, but what about ideas or proposals that go beyond the frameworks or extend or challenge them in some way? In arts accreditation, there are many examples of early support for new ideas, even whole new fields of study. Arts accrediting commissions have approved innovative, creative programs only to see some of them become the basis for further development and extension into many institutions. This approach and process are expected to continue in perpetuity.

Yet some innovations and creative approaches are intrinsically flawed. They have so many internal contradictions that they will not work. Further, an idea alone is rarely enough. Various systems necessary to support the idea must be in place if it is to be carried out successfully. Arts accreditation has helped institutions working with new ideas to eliminate internal contradictions and consider and develop the full complement of resources needed both to advance and protect themselves, as the new concept is brought to fruition.

Accreditation standards can be and are used in debates regarding change. Certain standards are virtually non-negotiable. For example, a baccalaureate degree must have at least 120 semester hours; degree titles must be consistent with content; the depth and breadth of learning proposed for a program must be attainable in the curricular time provided, and so forth. But beyond such fundamentals, there is plenty of room for innovation and creativity small and large. So, why isn’t there more innovation, more creativity?

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education empanelled by Secretary Spellings laid heavy blame at accreditation’s door. Obviously, the Commission did not do effective research into this area. However, as it did on so many other subjects, the Commission repeated what is often heard.

Those who study the issue more carefully come to a different position. Accreditation can be used accurately or inaccurately as a reason for stopping discussions of change, or it can be used to consider and develop change whether in terms of improvement or innovation. Accreditation can be in many ways, and it is not unusual for the word “accreditation” to be invoked in debate without reference to specific standards and policies or a call to the accrediting agency for consultation. This is unfortunate. As the record will show, the arts accrediting organizations and many other specialized accreditors support innovative and creative efforts on campuses.

Even if accreditation or perceptions about it do act as a brake at times, many other forces in society and academe are far more powerful inhibitors of change and innovation. Among these are: the continuing success of many traditional or slowly evolving ways of doing things (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”); extensive, inflexible, and ever-expanding government regulations; infrastructures and interests associated with certain concepts or ways of working; common agendas and methodologies of funders; benchmarking and other comparisons; criteria used in rating and ranking systems; standardized testing; funding patterns; exchanges of methodology; continuous promulgation of a “best practices” ethos; political correctness; competition (“almost all cars in the same price range look the same”); and so forth.

Notice how many times the outcomes movement proposes increasing the use and thus the influence of many of these change inhibitors, and how it often justifies such proposals by decrying the lack of innovation. These kinds of contradictions may seem nugatory in public debate, but if they become the foundation of policy, they will do their destructive work uninhibited by previous theoretical, political, or public relations calculations.

Let us look a bit further at the record. By developing creative approaches and supporting creative people, American higher education remains one of our nation’s most important generators of improvement and innovation. It has been a tremendous catalyst for all sorts of changes, most of them for the good. Both national and federal policies have supported the preservation and development of conditions for higher education to make all sorts of creative contributions in many disciplines and fields. The principles of accreditation that we have been discussing in these letters are part of the enabling resource base. Traditionally, accreditation does not to try to micromanage institutions or to predetermine what innovation or change should be and then attempt to force it in a one-concept-fits-all manner. Many with so-called innovations to sell do not like this feature of accreditation. The outcomes movement has been perennially critical; it claims to know what the assessment future must be for every institution and every field, and seeks means to impose its vision.

It is useful to step back from current events and exchanges and look carefully at transcending realities. Fantasies are not good bases for effective public policy or institutional action. It helps to remember that both change and innovative change have potentials to do enormous good or enormous harm. The actual result depends both on the quality of the idea and the general effect on society as a whole. During the 20th century, a number of large-scale social innovations had broad intellectual and political followings for a time, but under the harsh impositions necessary to enforce these innovations, tens of millions of people died. Goals matter, especially whether they are centered in service to or power over others. Innovations in communication are good examples; each innovation enables large numbers of individuals to be more capable, effective, and efficient. However, changes and innovations that reduce individual or local powers in favor of centralized control and coercion often produce negative effects. In general, the ensuing bureaucratic aggrandizement, mistrust, and over-emphases on reductionist forms of accountability are not conducive to improvement, creativity, or innovation. Indeed, history shows that authoritarian centralization is usually stultifying to economies and cultures. Collectivization of agriculture was an unmitigated disaster, for example.

The few ideas that we have presented in this letter provide one basis for assessing the viability of a number of proposals in the policy arena concerning the relationship among accreditation, the federal government, and institutions. An objective look will reveal that many proposals being made contradict each other. Urgent concerns for innovation are juxtaposed with calls for standardizing curricula and courses so that “outcomes” can be easily compared with each other by government officials. Accreditation is urged to become a greater facilitator of innovation, but policies proposed for a changed relationship between accreditation and the federal government would make accrediting organizations enforcers of sameness, thereby removing from institutions certain fundamental freedoms to make regular or creative decisions about academic matters.

Innovation often comes from minds attuned to solving problems first on their own terms; specific consumer applications come later. Many proposals coming from USDE are centered on consumerism first where much creative energy is focused on manufacturing images, fads, and trends. Indeed, much of the rhetoric calling for improvement, creativity, and innovation seems to come from a mindset predisposed to criticize higher education on any grounds whatsoever, irrespective of fact or history. Improvement, creativity, and innovation are expressed generically and without reference to content. They are used as attack buzzwords and as justifiers for centralization rather than justifiers of freedom within necessary, but minimal frameworks. In part, many proposals using these words are based on the untenable notion that command and control bureaucracies can be incubators and facilitators of much of anything, except of course, expansions of their own powers. Of course, bureaucracies centered in more realistic and positive values can be extremely helpful. Goals matter.

For all the reasons we have stated and many others, proposals that would federalize accreditation as a means for federalizing higher education are recipes for hobbling the future creative potential of our nation. It is a vicious irony that such proposals are forwarded with the rationale that such centralization is essential if the United States is to keep its creative edge and compete effectively in the future.

Our next, and last, briefing letter in this series will deal with the relationships of the issues we have been discussing to accreditation in the arts disciplines.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.

Best wishes,

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director

May 10, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

Over the next few weeks, you will hear and read many different reports and perspectives on the accreditation policy struggle here in Washington. We ask that you not focus on pieces emphasizing personalities or political theatre. You should also not accept indications that ultimately what the USDE wants, it will get. Please remember that no press account, no matter how accurate can capture the full set of dynamics operating in a situation such as this. Also, remember that we have three branches of government – a checks and balance system that hopefully will provide the means for reaching appropriate and balanced decisions.

As the Negotiated Rulemaking process comes to an end and the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act gains momentum in early summer we may suggest that you contact your representatives in Washington. At the moment the best thing to do is to stay informed, not on a moment by moment basis for the discussion changes hourly, but with the bigger picture and major activities. Here in the National Office we continue to work the problem along with a growing number of colleagues.

Here is what we suggest you do at this time.

1. Read and think about the briefing letters we have been sending. They are full of analyses and possible talking points about the issues in contention.

2. Share the letters with those who you believe would benefit from them, but please be judicious about this. Think about the extent to which specific individuals are ready to consider the point of view the letters express, and thus whether the letters have a chance to be effective in that instance.

3. If you have a personal acquaintance with a member of Congress, and you wish to share that with us, please let us know so that we may contact you later if your assistance could be especially useful.

4. Read and listen to others speak about Negotiated Rulemaking on accreditation with the background understanding that the American Council on Education, a number of other institution-based organizations in Washington including CHEA, and the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors (ASPA) are particularly outspoken in their opposition to USDE proposals that, in ACE president David Ward’s words, would “federalize” accreditation and thus higher education. We are not alone.

5. Remember that Negotiated Rulemaking will end soon, and then the Secretary of Education will issue proposed regulations with a comment period. Prior to that call for comment we expect to forward one or more short briefing papers and sets of talking points for your use in reviewing and responding to the proposal. We may also ask that you contact your Washington representatives with your responses.

6. Express concerns to leaders on your campus about the potential for federal misuse of accreditation and the importance of taking this possibility seriously. The independence of the local campus is at stake. The briefing letters may be useful; please see point 2.

7. Watch for possible information from us about reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. This act has important accreditation provisions and is the law that truly governs the relationship between the federal government and accreditation.

8. Know that NASM is doing everything it can to support a relationship among institutions, accreditation, and the federal government that continues to respect the independence of each, especially with regard to the academic decisions of institutions.

Let me take this occasion to thank you for your expressions of appreciation and support for the briefing letters. There are two more to come in the following weeks.

Best wishes as you end the academic year.

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director

April 11, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

The basic message of this letter is that if the public information function of accreditation is pursued only or primarily in consumerist terms, the accreditation system will become enveloped, narrowed, and ultimately corrupted by public relations considerations, and the larger national interest will be adversely affected. Please read on to find out why, and why understanding these issues is important for you and your institution.

It is typical for our office to receive messages from middle school students that read: “Dear NASM: Please send all your information.” Obviously, NASM and other accrediting associations have a great deal of detailed institutional data and analysis. Most is confidential. Typically, release is the prerogative of each institution; however, accrediting organizations also provide a great deal of public information. Web sites have greatly expanded access, especially to information about organizations, standards and review systems, and the accreditation status of institutions.

When an accrediting organization publishes the fact that an institution or program has been accredited, it means that the institution or program has demonstrated compliance with a published set of threshold standards, and that the institution has definite plans to continue improving its programs. A few published words signify the successful completion of a comprehensive review, the terms of which are specified and available for all to see. In difficult or problematic situations when an institution or program does not meet threshold standards or is in jeopardy of being unable to deliver the programs published in its catalog, accrediting organizations have mechanisms for warning the public by publishing probationary status or revocation. Accrediting organizations also publish descriptions of what accreditation status means in terms of degree and program offerings, ways to contact staff, and even hyperlinks to the Web sites of accredited institutions.

In terms of volume and comprehensiveness, there is no lack of public information regarding institutions of higher education and their accredited statuses.

Traditionally, the most important aspect of accreditation is the self-analysis created by each institution or program. After all, it is those responsible who have the most local knowledge and thus the best qualifications for making futures projections and decisions. The concept of self-study is based on premises of trust, fundamentally, that most people working in institutions and programs are committed to doing their best and to making improvements; that they, not accreditation or government, are the daily sources of effort, initiative, creativity, and achievement.

For the self-study process to be honest and useful, institutions must self-identify what is wrong or needs to be improved. Those experienced in accreditation know that institutions and programs are usually thoughtful and astute in making such judgments. Institutions conduct reviews willingly as long as their self-identified weaknesses, needs to improve, or aspirations remain confidential or under their control. At times, certain resource needs and weaknesses are made as visible as possible. But other issues addressed in self-study reports are not in this category. Some analyses are speculative, some deal with sensitive or highly complex information that is easily misinterpreted, especially when presented in forms used to communicate with other experts.

One of the multiple functions of accreditation is the provision of information useful to students. For all sorts of reasons, students do not want to attend an institution that has no accreditation at all. Specialized accreditation has various relationships to student interests and decisions depending on the nature of the field and the sophistication of the student. Contemporary American society is replete with consumer information. Reports, ratings, and analyses of all kinds pour forth about various products. Of course, the manufacturer or producer of these products is usually 100% responsible for the result the consumer receives. Even though higher education does not work in the same way, there are those who believe that the same consumer information approaches should be applied. From this position, a seemingly logical progression follows: accreditation generates information about institutions and programs; this information, if made public, would fulfill the same function as a restaurant rating service or performance comparisons of automobiles in the same price range; predictable, certifiable results from use of the product can be provided – if you buy this car, you will be able to go from zero to sixty miles per hour in ten seconds; if you enroll in this school… .

Using this line of thought as the basis for political action, the next step is to look at current policies and practices, declare an insufficiency of public information, propose the mandated release of all or certain kinds of accreditation information, and bolster the proposal by asserting that accreditation confidentiality is in direct conflict with the public interest. This argument makes sense to those who believe that providing consumer information is the only public interest issue in accreditation. Transparency is the justifying word. But as we have shown, there are many publics, many interests, and many public interests.

Those truly seeking to improve the quality of information for students choosing where they will apply or go to college would follow a different sequence. The logical steps are to ascertain the kind of new or different information needed, determine where that information is located, and consider how to combine and present the information honestly and more effectively than at present. If accrediting organizations have or could contribute to the provision of such information, then ways can be found to do so without damaging other aspects of various public interests that accreditation serves.

One way to begin reviewing these other aspects of public interests is through several brief considerations about confidentiality. Almost everyone from individual citizen to lawmaker understands the importance of having areas and places where confidentiality is preserved. This is especially true in a highly competitive society where there seems to be less and less compunction about indiscriminate or deceitful use of information that is even slightly negative or can be spun toward implication. As technology advances, many are increasingly concerned about privacy, the preservation of sacrosanct individual or local spaces. Total accountability and lack of privacy are features of totalitarian societies. If there are negative public relations or financial consequences for revealing problems, problems tend not to be revealed. Of course, both confidentiality and openness can be misused. But wise policies take a variety of considerations into account and place confidentiality in a productive relationship with the various purposes and needs present in any situation; the complexities of such relationships are recognized, understood, and acknowledged openly; and competing public goods are balanced in workable ways.

Where does all this leave us with respect to accreditation and its relationship with institutions and programs, and with the public interest? First, the public has an interest in accuracy. Falsehoods, half-truths, assertions that parts are wholes, snippets of truth as the basis for deception and spin are not acceptable in the accreditation arena. The overall approach to confidentiality in the traditionally conceived accreditation system is structured to avoid and prevent these kinds of possibilities. Some want to require each accrediting agency to prepare a summary report for the public following each accreditation review that would summarize findings, including weaknesses and areas for improvement. On the surface, this restaurant-review model may sound good. But in practice, it would risk tremendous damage because it would produce a reductionist and therefore misleading picture of almost every institution. For example, most institutions work hard to resolve weaknesses or improve conditions, and are often in the process of doing so as the full accreditation review concludes. Also, many of the weaknesses identified in accreditation reviews are not failures to meet threshold standards, but the basis of initiatives being taken to advance the capabilities of the institution. Each institution is reviewed every five or ten years, so all reviews are not close enough in the same time frame for weakness identification to remain current or fair in a competitive market-driven society. Such proposals would also put the accrediting association in the public relations business because each accreditor would have to summarize or editorialize about or characterize the results of an extremely complex review. Many individuals active in the higher education policy arena do not yet understand the dangers involved if accreditation were to move functionally from the businesses of notifying the public of threshold compliance and supporting improvement to being a direct factor in the public relations positioning of an institution or program.

Moving in such a direction is not in the public interest broadly defined. The public may not know or understand or even wish to do either, but it has a deep and abiding interest in a review system that promotes continuous improvement on substantive, content-based grounds in ways that deeply and honestly engage the institutions and programs themselves and support local analysis, speculation, vision, initiative, and achievement. Public interests are served by the engagement of experienced volunteer professionals who bring expertise to trust-based peer-review systems. The general public also has an interest in keeping educational costs low, and in maintaining the best conditions for institutions to raise funds from donor individuals and organizations.

The wrong policies on disclosure of accreditation information have the potential to damage all these public interests. Turning accreditation into another public relations exercise where the prime consideration becomes the production of public images rather than internal analysis and thoughtful open review of future possibilities is not in the public interest. Such a structural abandonment of substance and content would be foolish and damaging to the intellectually based efforts of our higher education system. The wrong approach can also do untold damage to the reputations and fund-raising abilities of institutions. It can create a climate that is adverse to volunteerism, and increase the prospects of litigation. To speculate for a moment: under such a proposed scheme, what would the operational effect be when the first student sues an accrediting organization because he did not pass the state licensing examination, he thinks the institution is 100% responsible for his education, and the “summary” of weaknesses published by the accrediting organization did not include his major? The wrong policies regarding public information will be engines of mistrust. Further, they could provide accreditation organizations with far greater leverage over institutions than is appropriate, thus damaging necessary separations-of-powers arrangements and systems of checks and balances.

Wise policy-making will find ways to assist the public with its consumer information needs without damaging these and many other equally important interests. The difficult and dangerous thing now is that some in the federal government wish to intervene deeply in the public information function of accreditation, and to regulate that relationship along purely consumerist lines.

Moving accreditation in just this direction is one of the most prominent recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education empanelled by the U.S. Secretary of Education. Such a result is a natural consequence of the long-term promotion of a consumerist position by leaders of the outcomes movement, coupled with the values generated by a culture increasingly shaped by sound bites and thus illusions of simplicity.

Here we have yet another perspective on why the traditional accreditation system is being attacked; a new variation on the theme of taking a part and pretending it is the whole, in this case, pretending that consumer information is the only important aspect of the public interest. But as we have shown, no public relations or political technique and no exhortations from high positions can make it so.

The danger to higher education and accreditation goes far beyond the irritation of dealing with myopic policy proposals and their potential bureaucratic aftermath. When there are attempts to use law and regulations to make such proposals control the evaluation environment in which our nation pursues so much of its future capability and capacity in all fields of endeavor, the prospects of losses in many areas of comprehensive national interest are great indeed.

Our next letter will consider the critical relationship between accreditation and student learning.

Thank you for your consideration and best wishes.

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director

April 3, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

The basic message of this letter is that the public interest in higher education is multi-faceted, and that attempts to define the public interest purely in consumerist terms are counterproductive and dangerous, especially if they come to be considered the primary basis for evaluation. Please read on to find out why, and why understanding these issues is important for you and your institution.

Wise and effective policy decisions are congruent with a realistic, comprehensive understanding of the multiple forces, factors, conditions, and needs in any given situation. When single-issue advocacy is being applied, it is typical to hear the term “public interest” used as though there were only one public and only one interest. Such a view cannot be the basis for wise and effective policy decisions because there are many publics and many interests. Indeed, in a democracy there are constant collisions of interests and points of view. On many great issues, there is no agreement. Effective policy makers serve each critical public interest in ways that do not damage the pursuit of other equally critical public interests; they work with complexity instead of pretending it is not there.

Even if something is generally considered to be in the public interest, there may be little agreement about why. Some believe that the local university is important primarily because it fields a football team they support with devotion and passion. Others have different reasons to provide support, but believe in the institution and promote its welfare all the same.

When each of us thinks about our own interests in major societal institutions, unless we are comprehensive experts in the field of endeavor, we do not know all the ways that institution is serving us. For example, unless we are in the medical field and somewhat of an expert on hospitals, we do not know all of the ways that the hospital field is working on our behalf. And even if we knew it generically in such terms as research, most of us would not be able to tell anyone in any detail the kinds of research that are being carried out, nor would we be able to evaluate results and projections if they were presented to us. We would not know enough about the content of what is being done to make a personal judgment. Our interest in hospital advancements is genuine and serious, but general and not at all sophisticated. Our understanding of the public interest is primitive, especially if we do not study hospital policy comprehensively. Even though we know a lot more about higher education, it is impossible for any one of us to know all of the public benefits higher education is providing. Even if we can cite generic categories, we do not know and cannot master the details, in part because there are too many of them.

There is yet another level for consideration. Beyond knowing what a set of societal institutions does generally or specifically in the public interest, it is even harder to recognize all of the foundational principles and operational philosophies necessary for success. When such principles and philosophies are explained in simple terms, they make sense; however, such explanations are rare because they usually are not necessary. Thus, attacks on conceptual foundations are much harder to recognize. Strategic foundational change can be promoted in terms of tactical goals.

In our society, it is rather typical to see a part of the public interest promoted as the entirety or the whole – only one thing is said to matter. But this is almost never true. Indeed, working comprehensively on matters of the public interest involves difficult balances between means and ends and compromises between multiple sets of good public interest positions that are in natural conflict with each other. For example, it is necessary to find the right, or at least a workable, relationship between security and privacy. It is not wise or safe to assume that the public interest lies in the 100% rejection of one and 100% acceptance of another.

These concepts and conditions – many publics, many interests; common interests, multiple rationales; general interest, in-depth knowledge; operational interests, foundational principles; and competing positive interests – create a background for considering public interest issues in higher education and accreditation. One aspect of the public interest in higher education is the successful education of individual students. Also, as a member of the public each student should have an interest in obtaining the best possible education. This means it is in the interest of the public at large and the student as a member of the public for each student to approach higher education as a learner and to take appropriate responsibility for obtaining an education. It is also in the public interest for each student to understand his or her responsibility. For all this to work, another aspect of the public interest must be fulfilled. The institution must have and use all the resources necessary and appropriate for each student to learn, particularly the best possible teaching and effective evaluation. Thus, the public also has an interest in the constant generation of qualified practitioners and professionals in various fields, many of whom become teachers.

The public has a deep interest in the results of higher education on many levels, but since ends require means, the public interest also includes providing the multiple resources necessary. For example, there can be no research results of the kind we all expect unless there are sophisticated labs. Such examples of ends and means relationships are self-evident. Much harder are the foundational ideas underlying higher education, especially those centered on the natures of the highest intellectual aspirations and work applied across various fields. Clearly, it is in the public interest for higher education to provide a place for the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, discovery, innovation, and creative expression all for their own sakes. It is in the public interest for places to be created and sustained where people can fail and learn from their mistakes. It is in the public interest for these places to be open to free inquiry, and to manage themselves according to the nature of the content they are dealing with and where that content takes them. It is in the public interest that these places preserve their freedom and flexibility to choose and address specifics in fields covering vast territories of thought, achievement, and action. These are sufficient examples to confirm the point that the public interest in higher education is far more complex than the simple formulation that the student is a consumer and must be served as a consumer. In fact, it is arguable whether this position is in the public interest at all since in its purest formulation, it absolves the student of all or most of the responsibility for learning.

As we have said in previous briefing letters, accreditation takes a holistic or comprehensive view of higher education. It does not separate means from ends or parts from wholes, and thus cannot accept the falsehood of any unitary definition of the public interest. This position is consistent with the deepest sorts of commitments to student learning because student learning as purpose and issue extends into many areas where the public interest is served. But to be true to itself and to the public interest, accreditation cannot accept that its primary or only purpose is to provide information, data, or comparisons for student consumers to use as they choose the institutions they wish to attend, as the report of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education recommends.

Of course, accreditation can and does provide information useful to prospective students. It is possible that the accreditation system could be more helpful by providing better information than it does at the present. But beyond public information, accreditation serves the public interest by doing three fundamental things. First, it ensures compliance with essential threshold standards appropriate to mission, content, and level of work. Second, it works with each institution or program individually to promote improvement in the delivery of effective advanced education to students. Third, at a deeper more foundational level, accreditation works in the public interest by providing a framework for the freedom and independence of institutional action that we wrote about in earlier letters. It is hard to know, but it certainly could be argued that the continuous development, preservation, and operation of this dispersion-of-powers, independence-supporting framework is the greatest of all public services that accreditation provides. This function is all but invisible and has been virtually taken for granted except by those who believe that the inconsistencies, creative approaches, and uniquenesses created by the parallel actions of many independent institutions working under a common framework should be replaced by centralized control, claiming that neatness, efficiency, and comparability will result and the public interest will be served.

We now have another explanation of why the accreditation system is under attack. Accreditation works from an understanding that there are multiple publics, multiple interests, and multiple, often conflicting public interests. Today, permanent outcomes-professing critics of accreditation focus on the single consumerist definition, whether expressed in terms of students, learning, or the economy as a whole. This focus represents yet another means for attempting to turn the foundational and operational strengths of higher education into negatives.

In our next letter, we will discuss the difficult problem of accreditation and pubic information, an arena where multiple public interests need to be served, and where currently a major policy battle is underway.

Thank you for your consideration and best wishes.

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director

March 21, 2007

Dear Colleagues:

The basic message of this letter is that working for results or “outcomes” in terms of disciplinary or professional content is different than using the concept of outcomes as the basis for political action to change the focus of higher education from content to quantitative assessment, rankings, comparisons, and the images they produce, or to promote centralization. Please read on to find out why, and why understanding these issues is important for you and your institution.

In our fifth briefing letter, we talked about the relationship between ends and means. I promised to provide some explanation of why assessments, once universally thought of as means, are now regularly presented and acted upon in policy contexts as though they were ends. How have assessment and assessment results become so deeply conflated with education and educational results? What are some of the forces producing these conditions?

There are many answers. Let us start with a positive one. First, educational assessment is a field of inquiry and practice. Like other such fields, self-motivated practitioners continue to learn new things and develop new techniques. They work to make their field as influential as possible. A second factor is technology and the expectations it raises. Computers are especially good at large scale math problems and data storage and retrieval. Rapid technological advances also produce the illusion that everything could or should work just the way technology does. If we could just digitize everything, write the right program, and put it into universal circulation, our problems would be over. A third factor is managerial responsibility. The further an administrator is from the location of actual work in a large and complex delivery system, the greater the desire for accountability mechanisms that have instant credibility, especially to others. A fourth factor is the residual power of scientism in our national consciousness, a positive in the sense that it drives discovery and application in the scientific domain. We love to consider ourselves scientific, so there is a tendency to believe that anything can be explained and ordered by the empirical methods of science and manifested in a technique or technology. But pure scientism can be a negative. It often leads to a non-negotiable position: anything that cannot be quantitatively ordered and explained by the scientific mode of thought is suspect or fraudulent. This view ignores many other ways of working in and apprehending the world – artistic, historical, and intuitional for example.

Each of these four conditions and perspectives can be factored into larger more holistic efforts to improve teaching and learning and to address other goals of higher education. Assessment techniques, technologies, management assurance necessities, and scientific methods and expectations can all be used productively in judgment-based systems applied to dynamic situations, and especially where answers are local and specific rather than universal. But using each of these four conditions and perspectives to discredit such judgment-based systems produces a serious problem. Here, disciplinary content considerations are shunted aside, parts or aspects are asserted to be the whole, and local expertise is discredited.

Of course, there are far more factors involved in producing the present policy environment in American higher education. The term “outcomes” is not just a signifier of results or of using assessment techniques to serve larger educational purposes. “Outcomes” also refers to a movement with political ambitions. We prefer to talk about this movement in terms of ideas rather than people. How can the presence of this political effort be identified and separated from considerations of outcomes as results and assessment as service to content? There is a simple, reductionist answer: when the term “outcomes” is being used to create mistrust, it is usually being used in the service of political action. There are other indicators. A large set of assertions and assumptions appear regularly in the promotional arguments of the outcomes movement. The first is that educational institutions are 100% responsible for student learning. This assumption is based on a belief in a degree of sameness among individuals that cannot be sustained by empirical evidence. It also represents a denial of the mutual responsibility between institution and student; institutions are considered factories processing identical people, and producing identical products that can be monitored and compared through quantitative assessment. The outcomes movement asserts that the math problem is simple, and the simple answer, fully representational. But consider this: without the 100% formula, the mathematical aspect of the assessment analysis becomes inordinately difficult. For example, in a small institution of 2,000 students, what happens to our math problem if students are 50% responsible for their own learning? Thousands of factors must then come into the equation. The real differences among individuals in terms of talents, orientations to work, study habits and so forth must be considered along with specific institutional and program missions, and mode of thought and disciplinary differences. Some of the factors in the equation are changing constantly. To deny reality by pretending that institutions are 100% responsible is to build a whole system of thought and action on a great fallacy and its orbiting illusions.

Here are several other themes regularly sounded by the outcomes movement. Experts in fields and disciplines cannot be trusted to evaluate because they represent special interests – their fields and the profession of teaching. All significant educational results can be determined the minute a particular program is over. High quality work is driven by coercion or fear of public embarrassment. No one cared about student learning until the advent of the outcomes movement, and to this day, no one but the outcomes movement cares sufficiently about it. The outcomes movement is the arbiter of success or failure across all of higher education, including work in disciplinary and professional content, even though outcomes movement proponents do not and could not create “outcomes” as results in more than one field, usually assessment itself.

How has so much that is so wrong, insupportable, and even nonsensical, become so accepted? The simple answer is repetition. Without a serious, visible opposition, repetitions of these notions have been doing their work to produce automatic acceptance for about 25 years. But there are many other reasons why the outcomes movement has gained so much influence. Here are a few of the many political and psychological forces at work. The outcomes movement promises simple “scientific” answers to complex questions. It promises a kind of democratic leveling through standardized evaluation and comparison. It promises power without reference to content and therefore is attractive to those who value process over content, and images over substance. It supports bureaucratic expansion and central control. It treats institutions as though they were competing factories and is thus consistent with the kind of competition that creates clear winners and losers, again a model embraced by many in our society. It meshes beautifully with the rhetoric of transparency and accountability. It is consistent with vocational goals for education, this in contrast to intellectual, artistic, and professional goals. It claims to address and reduce the escalating costs of higher education for students and their families. It is consistent with the concept of education as a business and the student as a consumer. There are many others, but one of the most powerful is that the outcomes movement both uses and is nourished by the culture of accusation, argument, and denunciation that dominates so much of our journalism and public life.

All of these issues and conditions put American higher education in a challenging place. There is reason to be concerned that this place is not a good one from which to make wise decisions that will protect and advance the full range of American higher education over the long term. Effective policy cannot be built on false assumptions, even if they are congruent with aspirations, notions, and images that seem attractive. But critiquing the outcomes movement is difficult because it has created a sound bite word prison. Any criticism is answered with the assertion that the criticizer does not want to be accountable and thus cannot be trusted. This rhetorical protection has been effective for a long time. It is used regularly against content-based professionals who object to the one-process-fits-all approach of many assessment regimes, and it strikes fear among those in higher education who must explain what the academy does to those on the outside.

The resultant failure to debate has created a significant problem. Accepting the tenets and assertions of the outcomes movement results in a significant loss of perspective. The assessment part is substituted for the educational whole. Procedure is substituted for content and reductionist indicators are substituted for educational quality. Bureaucratization and standardization of outcomes produces an anti-innovation climate. The outcomes movement constantly increases time taxes on productivity by conflating the reporting of results with the production of results. But most tragic of all, the outcomes movement produces its influence by fomenting mistrust in all educational systems and educational professionals. If outcomes assessment procedures or outcomes stewardship were ever deemed adequate, the movement would lose its reason for existence. Therefore, it cannot ever agree that outcomes efforts or reporting are sufficient. To survive, it must continually escalate its criticism and its demands.

To the extent the foregoing analysis is correct, it is easy to see why from its beginnings, the outcomes movement attacked the accreditation system. Accreditation, traditionally conceived, is deeply concerned about student learning but works on it from a far richer and more realistic set of assumptions and practices. Specialized accreditation organizations create assessment approaches based on the natures of various disciplinary and professional contents. Engineering accreditation and arts accreditation assess differently, for example. Accreditation is able to enfold and use the concepts of outcomes as results and assessment as a service, and in fact, it had done so long before there was an outcomes movement. In response to political and public relations pressures created by the outcomes movement, many accrediting agencies have embraced outcomes rhetoric and developed programs consistent with seeking outcomes as results and using assessment techniques more effectively. But before and during the work of the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, it became apparent that all this effort was not sufficient to gain the respect much less the approbation of the outcomes movement that is operating as a political force. True to the requisites of its existence, it found higher education and accreditation guilty and escalated demands for more attention to outcomes. The permanent indictment against higher education continued.

It remains to be seen whether a sufficient number of leaders in higher education and accreditation will see the portents of this situation and create a countering force. The danger is great. Many are concerned that the Department of Education now wishes to use the federal relationship with accreditation as a means for asserting comprehensive control over higher education. But the philosophical enabler, operational driver, and public relations basis of this federal initiative is the outcomes movement and the values and assertions we have just described. Twenty-five years of promotion have come to fruition in an oblique but potentially devastating attack on educational freedom and independence. The federal connection with accreditation is just the most available means at the moment. For all those years, many in higher education, when they said “outcomes” thought they were promoting results or assessment in service of content, or using the language of the moment as a matter of rhetorical convenience. But tragically, and in most cases inadvertently, they were also giving credibility and delegating influence to a movement that has obfuscated the content-based center and achievement of higher education and sold legislators, bureaucrats, and many in business on the notions that accountability is a simple matter that can and should be quantified, standardized, and centralized, and that individual and local decisions are best replaced by outcomes specialists who are agents of central governmental control.

The next briefing letter will deal with accreditation and the public interest.

Thank you for your attention and best wishes.

Samuel Hope
NASM Executive Director