Regional Accreditation and Distance Education
In 1995 an article in the Advising Quarterly
asserted that distance education had come of age. Like the teenager who thought adulthood
had been attained, however, we now have found that we are still very much involved in a
journey rather than having arrived at our ultimate destination.
Options for distance education have grown
exponentially. Further, a growing body of research has made it clear that students
enrolled in distance education can learn no less well than those attending more
traditional sites of higher education (although serious questions still remain about the
nonacademic aspects of higher education that may be lost when students do not physically
attend an institution). As increasing numbers of students, many from areas where travel to
the United States may be culturally or economically difficult, enroll in distance
programs, there has been a growing concern about quality control. U.S. regional
accrediting associations have cooperated in establishing standards to ensure such control
while still preserving the diversity from which U.S. education has long derived its
strength.
The Accreditors' Role
Regional accreditation is the primary quality
control mechanism for more than 3,600 institutions in the United States, including such
educational institutions as open enrollment community colleges, state universities (all of
which are regionally accredited), the majority of academic degree-granting private
colleges, and such research institutions as Harvard, Duke, and Princeton universities. As
institutions began to offer their programs either in whole or in part through electronic
or other distance means, their administrations looked to the regional accreditation
associations for guidance in ensuring that such nontraditional courses in no way
jeopardized the accreditation of their more traditional site-based offerings. At issue was
not only whether electronically mediated instruction could provide learning at the same
level as that in a classroom but also the question of which regional accreditor would
judge the quality of a program offered when the student was in one region of the country
and the instructor in another.
The six associations formed an interregional
staff committee to ensure that any changes made to standards by the individual regions
were comparable across regions. To cooperate and adopt comparatively uniform standards
through this committee was important—it would ensure that students, should they move
from one institution to another, could preserve the transferability of credits earned
through distance education in the same way as credits earned in a more traditional
fashion.
In addition to the interregional staff committee,
standards needed to be examined by a task force convened within each region. While all the
regional bodies have standards that are comparable in content, the exact wording and
interpretation of those standards vary throughout the regions.
Task force members were expected to represent
different levels of education and to be knowledgeable about both the advantages and
disadvantages of distance education. Typical was the experience of the New England
Association, where members of the task force included a representative from an extremely
selective traditional university as well as several from institutions that had made a
major investment in the expansion of their distance education offerings.
Review Process: New England
The New England task force took its eleven
existing standards and examined each one, determining whether it was applicable to
distance education as it stood, not applicable because of some inherent contradiction, or
applicable but needing specific explication for the distance education community. The aim
was not only to supply evaluators and commissions with standards by which existing
programs could be judged but also to provide guidelines for institutions considering
implementing distance education degrees or programs.
As its first project, the task force in 1997
devised and distributed a survey of current and projected distance education activities
and concerns to its two hundred member institutions in the six New England states. At that
time, sixty-three institutions in the region indicated that they already were offering
distance education courses, with about fifty indicating that they were offering at least
one degree program, from the associate to the master's degree, through distance education.
(In New England, those numbers have already since increased substantially. In the rest of
the country, because of the existence of such consortia as the Southern Regional
Electronic Campus and Western Governors' University, the increase has been even greater.)
Concerns and Modifications
Among the concerns about distance education
expressed by the New England institutions responding to the survey, six were especially
prominent:
- Quality control, that is, the assurance of course
and student achievement;
- Cost and accessibility for both students and
institutions;
- Pedagogical considerations;
- Faculty development, compensation, and workloads;
- Access to academic support services, library
resources, and technological expertise;
- Copyright issues.
Institutions, when asked what the Commission
should consider "to ensure that distance education is characterized by the same
concerns for quality, integrity, and effectiveness that apply to campus based
instruction," also provided such specific comments as—
"A comparison of the results of these
programs with those in a more traditional format, with an understanding that the
educational outcomes of distance education and campus-based programs be the same"
"The need to bring disabled and lower income
students into the higher education community through distance education and the cost to
less well-endowed colleges of doing so"
"Faculty professional development about how
to teach effectively through these technologies"
"Understanding of the increased workload
involved in effective distance education and the ways in which that will impact on faculty
compensation"
"Ensuring that program content, not the
availability of technology and technology-based materials, drives the program."
In reviewing the standards of the New England
Association (which, like the policy eventually adopted, can be accessed at ), special attention was paid to the way in which the
existing standards would resolve the above issues and other concerns of member
institutions.
The review of the standards quickly made clear
that the New England Association, like the other regional associations, could
appropriately modify existing standards for quality control so that distance education
offerings could be included within them. Because its standards, like those of other
regional associations, call for institutions to have programs, faculty, information
resources, and student services "appropriate" to their mission, which itself
must be "appropriate for higher education," no quantitative measures needed to
be modified to meet the realities of distance education.
As an example of what modifications were made,
the general requirement for admission to accredited institutions in New England
reads—
Standards for admission ensure that student
qualifications and expectations are compatible with institutional objectives. Individuals
admitted demonstrate through their intellectual and personal qualifications a reasonable
potential for success in the program to which they are admitted. ("Programs and
Instruction," Standards for Accreditation, NEASC/CIHE, 1992)
Although it does not change these rules, the
following statement from the Commission's Policy and Procedure for the Accreditation of
Academic Degree and Certificate Programs Offered Through Distance Education explicates
them:
"The institution assesses student capability
to succeed in distance education programs and ensures that accepted students have the
background, knowledge, and technical skills needed to undertake the distance education
program."
As the task force reviewed each standard, it
suggested similar amplifications. At the same time, it found itself disproving such myths
as the increased faculty-student ratio possible because of distance education. (Each
student in a distance education course has the opportunity to ask faculty members
questions, rather than the three or four students who might be called on in a typical
fifty-minute class. This means that distance education is highly faculty-intensive, a fact
that many institutions and unions are beginning to take into consideration in assigning
workloads to the teaching staff.)
A National Agenda
In addition to regional activity, cooperation
between the associations continued. When the interregional committee next convened, it had
the then-existing policies of the various regions to review. It was also joined by a
representative of the regional agencies' recognizing body, the Council on Higher Education
Accreditation, which was itself conducting a major study on quality control in distance
education. (The publication that eventually ensued from that study can be accessed at .) In addition, the committee reviewed various documents
on distance education published by the American Council on Education, the Western
Interstate Cooperative of Higher Education, the Distance Education Training Council, and
others. It was quickly apparent that most other documents focused on programs, not always
collegiate, rather than whole institutions. Among the regionals' issues, however, was the
necessity for distance education programs to be integrated into the approval, planning,
and budgeting processes by which institutions as a whole were governed.
A Successful Adoption
After the interregional committee had drafted its
recommendations, it reported back to the regions, where the suggested policy was reviewed
and in some cases edited before being distributed to the organizations' membership for
discussion and eventual adoption.
Since accreditation activities involve
institutional self-studies, validation by visiting teams, and review and approval by a
central governing body (the Commission), several issues had to be sorted out during this
process. For example, it was decided that the addition of substantial distance education
activities to an existing institution needed to be reported to the Commission, which could
then at its discretion mandate a special visit or, in cases where the infrastructure of
the institution obviously was sufficient to support such a program, order that the
activities be reviewed by the Commission at the next regularly scheduled accreditation
visit.
Similarly, it was determined that in evaluation
of distance education programs, the visiting committee would include both someone
knowledgeable about the subject material being reviewed and another person specifically
knowledgeable about distance education to examine the appropriateness and sufficiency of
the institution's methodology and support. In the review by the Commission, also, a member
familiar with distance education would be one (but not the only) primary reviewer of
overall quality and appropriateness.
During summer 1998, at a retreat held by the
staffs of the regional commissions, the original committee convened a session to determine
whether there were issues insufficiently addressed in the new policies. Reaching a
consensus that the policies were sufficient, the regionals were pleased to have justified
the comments of the U.S. Senate, reporting on its version (S-1882) of the Higher
Education Amendments (3105-181):
The committee has observed that a number of
recognized accrediting organizations have increased their capacity to deal with the new
forms of distance education. The committee believes that distance education, even when
delivered by new means, should meet the same standards of educational quality as on-site
education. The Department of Education, through the secretary's recognition of
accreditors, should not subject distance education programs and courses to separate or
additional quality criteria and should not accept lower standards with regard to distance
education.
Dr. Amy Kirle Lezberg, Visiting Fellow, New
England Resource Center for Higher Education, Graduate School of Education, University of
Massachusetts/Boston, Boston, MA 02125-3393; Telephone: (617) 527-8512; E-mail:
