Accreditation

Education Department announces eight winning partnerships in experiment to open federal aid to alternative providers, with a possibly influential new way of assuring academic quality.

U.K. report on for-profit colleges in six countries finds few benefits of sector and calls for tighter regulation, while acknowledging lack of data makes it hard to set rules.

College of Charleston professor says he's been forced out of a job for refusing to list learning outcomes to please an accreditor. He's suing and says academic freedom is being violated.

Technology think tank says standardized testing by outside groups and alternative forms of credentialing could create helpful competitive pressure on higher education and the traditional college degree.

New interstate network seeks to help students transfer across state lines without losing credits, but also defers to faculty members at each college about how to measure learning.

Everyone complains about not getting reliable data on student success, but no one does anything about it. Until now, write Mary Ellen Petrisko and John Etchemendy.

By Mary Ellen Petrisko and John Etchemendy

Federal panel recommends termination for ACICS, an accreditor of several notorious for-profits, while also tightening the screws on the American Bar Association and other agencies.