ABSTRACT
Accountability-the process of publicly documenting institutional practices and effects-is one of three ways that higher education institutions relate to and sustain the support of the larger society. Offering evidence of institutional fidelity to societal expectations of what the academy should achieve complements and, in turn, reinforces the two other pillars of societal support: public trust in colleges and universities, and the academy’s success in the marketplace (Trow, 1996). Situating accountability within this three-part framework properly focuses attention on accountability as a sociological process as well as a technical one. The key work of accountability deals with the question of how the institution presents itself to the larger community, not simply what data will be collected and how.
