Explaining the Accreditation Debate

Inside Higher Ed: "Accreditation operates through a “peer review” system in which an individual institution studies and critiques itself (according to the accrediting agency’s standards) and the accreditor and its team of reviewers, using their “professional judgment,” gauge whether the institution is meeting its own goals and the agency’s broadly defined standards. The process is used largely to help institutions improve themselves, but it also serves as the closest thing higher education has to an externally applied stamp of approval. Although it rarely happens, the agencies have the authority to pull an institution’s accreditation, and with it the ability of its students to receive federal financial aid."