Defining peer institutions through mission, purpose, aspirations, and societal impact
The National Association for Academic Excellence Inc. | January 2025
A subtle but substantial change in public policy at the federal level four years ago provided the occasion to revisit the organizational fundamentals of accreditation in the U.S. The rule making reframed geographic parameters attached to an accreditor’s scope of recognition to include only one of three options: an individual state; a geographic region as defined by the accreditor (not the federal government); or the United States. Absent was reference to “regional accreditation” as defined by historical precedent or published regulation. (ED-2018-OPE-0076; Federal Register 2019-23129)
The implications of deleting “regional accreditation” from the Department of Education’s website and regulations are subject to debate. However, in the absence of lines on a map, colleges and universities now confront issues and opportunity they have not had in a meaningful way for more than a century, since the formation of regional accreditors with exclusive territorial hegemony enforced by the U.S. government. That is, absent regional designations:
- How do we define our peers for the purposes of accreditation and quality assurance?
- How do we enlist those peers into an association of colleges and universities with the stated purpose of performing peer-based quality assurance?
- What commonalities other than geography merit our consideration and emphasis?
At first glance, ED.Gov’s revisions to 34 CFR Part 602 may appear to have created a void regarding those issues. In fact, the policy retains clear parameters for peer definition and enlistment. Requirements include:
- Institutions that are of similar scope, type and missions and that offer comparable programs in comparable disciplines.
- Utilizing individuals with relevant expertise to review institutions and programs. Peer reviewers are expected to have qualifications and expertise appropriate to the programs, degrees, or certificates they are reviewing.
- Decision-making bodies comprised of a range of individuals, such as academic and administrative professionals from accredited institutions as well as public representatives who are not affiliated with the institutions under review.
- Publicly available criteria for the selection of decision makers and peer reviewers as well as policies to ensure fairness, objectivity, and comprehensiveness of review.
While requirements two, three and four are more focused on operational considerations, the first – institutions of similar scope, type and missions and that offer comparable programs – merits great attention at the leadership and executive levels.
For the accreditation affiliation to deliver maximum value, the peer reviews must be based on clear understanding and respect for the unique characteristics of each member institution in the context of mission, purpose, aspirations, and societal impact. As a voluntary membership organization, peer institutions formed as an accrediting body not only have the authority to establish and clarify those commonalities upon formation; they have an obligation to do so in the absence of de facto geographic parameters.
ED.Gov has described the rationale for the policy changes derived from ED-2018-OPE-0076. The deletion of regional accreditation from Part 602 was to make accrediting agencies “less prescriptive and to provide greater autonomy and flexibility to facilitate agility and responsiveness and promote innovation,” and to “streamline accreditation and recognition processes, helping to reduce costs and unnecessary paperwork and allowing a stronger focus on institutional quality and improvement.”
Implied but not expressed is the substantial opportunity for colleges and universities seeking alternate sources of accreditation to investigate, consider, and intentionally define and establish the set of peer institutions with which their quality and integrity will be compared. Geographic commonalities may have had some value and relevance in the past, but the emergence of potent higher education systems unrestrained by geography due to digital and online resources diminishes maps and physical borders as meaningful criteria for defining peers. Instead, colleges and universities have the liberty to define their peer group in more meaningful and defensible ways, as they encounter the opportunities for alternate providers of accreditation. The first step in moving toward other quality assurance providers necessarily requires deliberation and decisions about “who are our peer institutions?” and “how did we decide to affiliate with those institutions?”