Rethinking Accreditation in Higher Education. Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda

American Enterprise Institute. 1150 Seventeenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 202-862-5800; Fax: 202-862-7177; Web site: http://www.aei.org

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Accreditation (Institutions); Colleges; Federal Government; Government Role; Educational History; Advisory Committees; Compliance (Legal); Politics of Education; Outcomes of Education

Accreditation has long been treated as a guarantee of institutional quality, a proxy for trust, and the gateway to federal dollars. Lawmakers rely on it, students assume it protects them, and parents believe it signals excellence. But while its purpose has barely changed since the 1950s, the system around it has grown into a compliance maze that neither ensures quality nor empowers consumers. In 1992, Congress passed the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI)--meant as a modernization that added transparency, independence, and rigor in recognizing accrediting agencies. In 2025, NACIQI remains at the center of an approval process that continues to be opaque, political, and fundamentally misaligned with student needs. This paper argues that a better path forward would establish a federal outcomes-based eligibility standard managed by the Treasury and a privacy-protected national student-outcomes database for earnings, employment, completion, and value.

ERIC

2026

ED677955