Page 46 - Crisis in Higher Education

The Higher Education Conundrum • 21

and effort on the part of tenured faculty and program administrators, gen-
erate lengthy reports, and carry significant costs. These accreditations can
be a source of conflict between the programs/schools/colleges and central
administration. The educational units want accreditation because it gives
them standing in the academic community, which gives them bragging
rights and is helpful in recruiting faculty. It also provides opportunities to
brand and market their programs to potential applicants and their parents
as accredited and therefore of the best quality. As budgets in higher edu-
cation become tighter and tighter, educational units look forward to these
visits because the findings can be used as levers to pry more resources from
“tight-fisted” administrators who are looking to save money. The accredi-
tors’ reports may identify faculty and other resource deficiencies that must
be addressed if accreditation is to be granted. Central administrations are
learning to dread these visits and accuse their educational units of using
accreditation as a vehicle to “blackmail” the institution for resources that it
does not have and the educational units do not need. As with most disagree-
ments, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
To show the magnitude of the problem with regulation and accredita-
tion, consider the following. The Higher Education Compliance Alliance,
which provides information about federal compliance, found more than
250 separate federal compliance regulations for U.S. colleges and univer-
sities. A report from Hartwick College, a small liberal art college with
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1,500 undergraduates students in upstate New York, shows how signifi-
cant this problem can be. Hartwick is regulated by 28 different federal
agencies and department, 15 different state agencies, 4 local governments,
7 accreditation agencies, and 4 private entities. It must comply with three
athletic associations, including the NCAA, which has 94 annual compli-
ance requirements. It is required to comply with rules and regulations
from several hospitals and medically related organizations for its nursing
program. There are hundreds of statutes and regulations with which it
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must comply. The time and cost of compliance are significant.

1.7 TENURE

It is a right to due process, meaning that an institution cannot fire a
tenured professor without presenting evidence that the professor is not
competent, behaves unprofessionally, or is a member of a department