Introduction

Accreditation in the United States is about quality assurance and quality improvement. One could hardly do better in beginning an inquiry into how accreditation is changing and why it must than quote Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Of course, there is another perspective, one that has appeared in critical reports and insistent recommendations since the turn of the century. By this view, accreditation has failed to keep pace with an increasingly diversified and problematical higher education environment. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers questions that are (or should be) frequently asked concerning how accreditation operates, what accreditation seeks to accomplish, and how accreditation has developed. It examines one source of this complexity, the proliferation of the missions of accreditation. The book takes up many of the issues accreditation faces.