Giving Compass' Take:

• Alana Dunagan argues that government regulations relating to higher education accreditations can needlessly stifle innovation.

• How can regulations prevent abuse without stifling innovation? 

• Learn how to maximize the potential of online courses. 

Does accreditation stifle innovation in higher education? It depends.

In October 2012, the accrediting commission of New England Association of Schools & Colleges approved Southern New Hampshire University’s request to create an online, competency-based program that would partner with employers to provide a college education for just $3,000 per year. The program, College for America, was spotlighted as innovative by then-President Barack Obama for providing students with a low-cost, high-quality education, helping to drive the university’s enrollment toward 100,000.

A few months later, a profile of a similar program offered by Bellevue University appeared in Inside Higher Ed. Bellevue’s program was also online, competency-based, and targeting a total cost of a degree of $10,000. But as the program gained attention, Bellevue’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, began to back away and change its position. Ultimately, it demanded that Bellevue shut down the program — not because of quality or viability, but for arcane governance reasons.

In a chapter that appears in the recently published Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education, my coauthor, Michael B. Horn, and I argue that accreditation in the context of innovation is essentially a game of Russian roulette. It is impossible to know what innovative models can or will be accredited, since similar initiatives are treated differently by different accreditors — even by the same accreditor at different points in time, or by different accrediting teams looking at the same institution.

Read the full article about higher education accreditation by Alana Dunagan at Christensen Institute.