According to Lindsey Burke of Heritage,
Under DeSantis’ proposal, which mirrors the HERO Act introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, states would be able to empower any entity—universities, businesses, non-profit institutions, etc.—to credential individual courses. South Carolina, for instance, could allow Boeing to credential aeronautical engineering courses, and Texas could enable Texas Instruments to credential mathematics courses.
I imagine that the sticking point here is eligibility for financial aid, including student loans. If you have Federal money that you only want to go toward accredited courses, then the Federal government would seem to have a legitimate claim that it needs to control accreditation.
If the Federal accreditation process is captured by rent-seekers, I am not sure I see why states would not be captured, also. So I am inclined to look for a different solution to the problem.
The public policy rationale for accreditation is that we want government education subsidies to be spent on the merit good of education. The current accreditation policy is neither necessary nor sufficient for that. Today, an accredited university that funnels student activity fees into support for drunken bacchanals is supposedly providing the merit good of education, while a non-accredited course that helps someone get a job is not.
Today, we impose a nearly impossible burden of proof on alternative forms of education. I would propose changing the system to impose the burden of proof on those who would deny that funds are going toward a merit good. In other words, let students spend their education subsidies (or flexdollars) on any form of education they deem valid. If a student chooses a low-quality course, the one who is hurt the most is the student. If the student makes a ridiculous choice (like spending the money on drunken bacchanals and calling that “education”), then the student and the supplier of the improper service can both be prosecuted and fined. Maybe even some currently accredited institutions headed by passive college administrators could be prosecuted and fined.
Now we’re talkin’! So, to get the financial aid, pass the 3rd party test.
Conditional loan forgiveness! Boo-yahhhh!
Is that too much enthusiasm for this blog?
I’d be happier if employers themselves released their own evaluations of various credentialing programs, or reports about the average credentials of their new hires, but of course that would expose them to all kinds of liability and controversy.
The best thing employers could do is set up their own credentialing academies for which students can pay to demonstrate their ability to learn the skills that the employer deems most important. If you take an unpaid internship and lower the pay (that is, demand tuition) and also lower the productivity (learning instead of intern-work), then the net effect is very similar.
Your first paragraph: they do this, at least informally, internally. To address liability and controversy, the first can be addressed by policy and for the second, they could provide evaluations that are anonymized to an evaluation specialist.
My undergrad bundled drunken bacchanals with a high-market-value credential: I went to Harvey Mudd. Unbundling would have been useful for the students who didn’t want to walk past courtyards smelling of cheap beer every Saturdya and Sunday morning.
Politically reforming the college credential is tantamount to the formal education industry voluntarily discrediting the bottom 80% of its participants. I don’t see it happening.
In the long run I’m optimistic about credential reform, but I think it’s going to happen as an evolutionary process from various decentralized private actors.
“If the student makes a ridiculous choice (like spending the money on drunken bacchanals and calling that “education”), then the student and the supplier of the improper service can both be prosecuted and fined.” — I doubt that the judicial system can do this effectively. And the students are already on the hook for the loans, so why creating additional them liability seems gratuitous.