Understanding Accreditation: The Librarian's Role in Educational Evaluation

Most librarians today have at least some acquaintance with accreditation, if only because they possess a master's degree that has been accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). Since academic librarians may be asked to participate in the accreditation process undertaken by their institutions, it is particularly important to understand the role of accreditation in American higher education, the various challenges it has faced, and the subsequent changes that have been set in place. Accreditation offers an opportunity for librarians to contribute to institutional self-assessment; current trends in accreditation also challenge librarians to examine the criteria by which they measure success.

Through accreditation, society ensures that the goods and services provided to its citizens meet standards of quality and are delivered with integrity. This process of voluntary self-regulation is unique to North America; in most other countries, national ministries of education perform the quality assurance function. Most states maintain some form of regulation of educational institutions (state boards of education, for example), but there is no central regulation of educational institutions at the national level. Through educational accreditation, professions, businesses, or other fields join with one another to exercise certain controls for the betterment of society at large. ¹ When this system of voluntary self-regulation focuses on institutions, it is known as accreditation; when it addresses the individual practitioner, it is called certification.

Credentialing of individuals may be either privately or publicly administered. When administered by a governmental agency, it is known as licensure. Although accreditation is private, non-governmental, and voluntary, it is often coupled with these other credentialing systems to provide a broad quality assurance system aimed at protecting the public, and increasingly, at defining the criteria by which quality is assessed.

Librarians are affected by accreditation because the provision and use of library materials and services affects the quality of the students' educational experience. How institutions manage and support library resources reflects the priorities of the institution, the educational goals and methods of faculty, and the performance of students and graduates. Librarians need to understand accreditation and how it works, and to be familiar with the events that have influenced the structure of accreditation in recent years. The future of accreditation practice is also of interest, since the standards that are established and enforced may affect the proportion of the institutional resources that are available to libraries and the expectations for their performance. Furthermore, the current approach to accreditation emphasizes self-assessment and continuous improvement, providing useful management tools for librarians. When librarians understand how their participation in these processes can result in improvement for the library per se, in addition to their participation in the self-study of the parent institution, both the library and the institution benefit.

This article will describe the practice of accreditation in general, and will identify several issues and trends that occurred as a result of changes in political and social structures. It will also discuss some of the challenges facing accreditation today, and how the changes in higher education may affect both libraries and accreditation.

There are two types of accreditation in higher education: institutional and specialized (programmatic). Accreditation for entire institutions is administered through six regions within the United States: New England, Middle States, Southern, North Central, Western, and Northwest. Standards for institutional review are established by the accrediting agency in consultation with the academic community. Programmatic accreditation reviews programs that are aimed at the educational preparation of entry level professionals. Standards are generally set by the profession itself, based on knowledge and skills expected of beginning professionals. The standards often coordinate with expectations for licensure exams, although they may exceed these minimum standards. Specialized accreditation teams review courses of study within larger institutions, as well as in schools where professional preparation is the sole offering, such as medical and law schools that are not located within a larger parent institution.

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