Higher-Education Accreditation: Market Regulation or Government Regulation?

In: The independent review: journal of political economy, Band 17, Heft 2

Abstract

In recent public debates regarding higher education, considerable attention has been paid to the general accreditation of higher-education institutions. In this short article, the author briefly explores accreditation in higher education and the extent to which it represents market regulation or government regulation. He looks at the extent to which general accreditation of colleges and universities as practiced in the US has emerged from the needs of students, colleges, and universities or has been planned from the top down. If accreditation is an emergent phenomenon, like a marketplace, then as social scientists people should be extremely skeptical of attempts to "fix" what may not be broken. Adapted from the source document.