Accreditation based on strong principles, standards and structured, systematic review of institutional effectiveness is compared to proxies for quality that are applied by government regulatory entities. The areas of evaluative overlap between accreditation, consumer protection and federal student aid stewardship are described and compared regarding complementary and contradictory aspects. Variances in data derived from lagging intervals and low accuracy are discussed. Relevance of performance indicators to contemporary issues in the higher education value proposition is evaluated as well.