Viewbooks, rankings, and accountability measures cast colleges as distinctive and readily comparable. But the average student experience doesn't differ that markedly among institutions, according to this year's National Survey of Student Engagement. Rather, the survey found, more than 90 percent of the variation in educational quality occurs among…

The Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) provides a framework for public universities to provide evidence of success and increase public confidence. The goals of the VSA are threefold: (1) Demonstrate greater accountability and stewardship to the public; (2) Enhance effective educational practices by measuring educational outcomes; and (3)…

An institutional review of Evergreen State College that was undertaken by the Washington Council for Postsecondary Education is described. A review of a higher education institution by a state agency was unusual but was a compromise action by the 1977 state legislature, which also considered closing the college, whose institutional cost level was…