The accreditation process and the federal role in shaping it are clearly of critical importance for ensuring all students have access to quality postsecondary options. And yet, due to the complexity of the relationship among the federal government, accreditors, and institutions, and the opacity of the accreditation process itself, there is little systematic evidence about the effects on higher education institutions and their students of this quality assurance regime and the periodic federal policy changes that reorient it. Ithaka S+R began a pilot study in 2021 to assess the feasibility of using publicly available data on the accreditation process and outcomes to evaluate the impact of federal oversight mechanisms on institutional and student outcomes. This report provides an overview of accreditation in the US and assesses the impact of changes in federal oversight. It focuses on changes to oversight that were part of the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 and specifically looks at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) institutions given data availability. It also examines an oversight dashboard of accreditors launched in 2016 to understand if this form of public accountability may help improve student outcomes.