Accreditation is being transformed from a valued private-sector process--over which the federal government historically has exercised limited control--to a process that is subject to more and more federal involvement. The implications of this shift, profound for faculty members, can include the erosion of academic freedom and the loss of…

In responses from higher education to the 2006 report on Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education," one particular argument is made repeatedly: that educational standardization of the sort implicitly called for in the…

Today, Americans face a challenge to the organization of higher education that, however it is resolved, will transform the enterprise. That challenge goes under the name "learning outcomes," or sometimes "accountability." It is a challenge brought largely by those outside higher education and is based on criticisms of the…

Since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, thinking about America's schools has been taken over by something like philosopher Rene Descartes's malignant demon of doubt. The act's exclusive focus on assessing student achievement and faculty accountability in terms that can be "proved" mathematically has cast into doubt a…