Higher Ed needs to change.  Can our accreditation system lead this change, or do we need a new way to measure and monitor success in Higher Ed?

Barbara Gellman-Danley, President of the Higher Learning Commission and Beth Sibolski, President of MSCHE talked about innovation, the future of higher ed and the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act at the 2016 CAEL conference this afternoon.

An important conversation with many challenges and no clear answers.

Fundamental questions on how success in higher ed should be measured have no clear cut answers.  By today’s DOE guidance success is measured by:

• Graduation rates
• Cohort default rates
• Loan repayment rates
• New DOE leadership will have a different approach on measuring institutional success, but what will it be and what role will our accreditation leadership have on the new approach?

If we can’t answer the question on how to truly measure student success, and it was clear today we can’t, perhaps we need an entirely new approach to accreditation and the Higher Education Act.  It was written over a half century ago…