Supposedly, accreditation ensures that educational programs are of high quality, as if it’s the equivalent of the UL symbol on an appliance. It was seldom any good at that, however. Accreditors have always been far more interested in a school’s outward trappings than digging deep to see if students learn anything.
These days, accreditation often serves as the vehicle for the transmission of leftist ideology into schools. So argues John Sailer in today’s Martin Center article.
He writes that, “But to roll back the continuous overreach of DEI, it’s important to understand the various institutional incentives that lead to its growth in the first place. I write to highlight just one dimension: accreditation. Increasingly, the various bodies that accredit colleges and schools — from medical schools to journalism schools to schools of engineering — push for far-reaching and ideologically-laden DEI policies. For an institution to resist such a mandate is a risky and complicated move.”
Sailer shows how medical-school accreditation has demanded more “diversity” from schools, such as hiring more minority faculty and embedding “woke” elements into the curriculum.
Similarly, social work and public-health programs must now commit to the DEI agenda.
Sailer concludes, “In many cases, these standards are vague, and their implementation is opaque. But they illustrate an important feature of institutional capture. The pressure comes from all directions, not merely from student activists, zealous professors, or enterprising administrators. The process of reform will thus require rewiring multiple incentives. Accreditation will have to be a part of that conversation. And because many accreditors are formally recognized by the state — something that can be revoked — they might ultimately serve as a promising first-step.”