For those who have been under a rock, totally separated from any form of information provision for the last year, ugly things happened on and around the Penn State University Athletics Department (in particular the football program) under the care of former head coach Joe Paterno. No, Joe Paterno did not do the ugly things, that was handled by Jerry Sandusky (as convicted by a jury in a court of law after a proper legal procedure). But, my musing here is not to rehash who did what, when and where at Penn State, but to comment on the latest information I have read about this ugly event, namely that an accrediting organization is using this unfortunate situation as an excuse to issue an notice of jeopardy of the school's academic accreditation.
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education accredits colleges and universities in the Mid-Atlantic region. Accrediting is the process created to supposedly maintain high academic standards for colleges and universities by having an outside agency decide if you are properly educating students. What this generally means is that the accrediting agencies decide how you should write syllabi, lecture, what materials should be used, what types of courses should be taught--but of course the organizations claim that they are only doing what they have been asked to do by the schools, while the reality is that they are doing what the dept of education of the U.S. govt tells them to do. Many opponents, myself included, believe that accrediting processes are designed to attempt to routinize education, so that academic liberty is at stake because eventually we will all use the same syllabus to teach the same material from the same books using the same lecture outline. So, instead of building academic reputation based on the quality of the students you graduate, you now get an instant "reputation" as an accredited college or university based on inspection and report from the accrediting organization. I'll stop griping about accreditation now.
So, here is my problem. What did the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal have to do with the quality of academic life at Penn State University? Under what reasoning is an accrediting agency throwing around its authority to ask Penn State University to submit reports by the end of September detailing the university's compliance with governmental requirements and the ability of the school to meet it's financial obligations stemming from the Freeh investigation and decisions of the NCAA (I may talk about this "august" body at some other time)? As correctly noted by Blannie Bowen, vice provost for academic affairs at Penn State University, "This action has nothing to do with the quality of education our students receive." So, for my two cents the Middle States Commission on Higher Education needs to butt-out and go back to aggravating people with stupid requirements regarding wording of syllabi.
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education accredits colleges and universities in the Mid-Atlantic region. Accrediting is the process created to supposedly maintain high academic standards for colleges and universities by having an outside agency decide if you are properly educating students. What this generally means is that the accrediting agencies decide how you should write syllabi, lecture, what materials should be used, what types of courses should be taught--but of course the organizations claim that they are only doing what they have been asked to do by the schools, while the reality is that they are doing what the dept of education of the U.S. govt tells them to do. Many opponents, myself included, believe that accrediting processes are designed to attempt to routinize education, so that academic liberty is at stake because eventually we will all use the same syllabus to teach the same material from the same books using the same lecture outline. So, instead of building academic reputation based on the quality of the students you graduate, you now get an instant "reputation" as an accredited college or university based on inspection and report from the accrediting organization. I'll stop griping about accreditation now.
So, here is my problem. What did the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal have to do with the quality of academic life at Penn State University? Under what reasoning is an accrediting agency throwing around its authority to ask Penn State University to submit reports by the end of September detailing the university's compliance with governmental requirements and the ability of the school to meet it's financial obligations stemming from the Freeh investigation and decisions of the NCAA (I may talk about this "august" body at some other time)? As correctly noted by Blannie Bowen, vice provost for academic affairs at Penn State University, "This action has nothing to do with the quality of education our students receive." So, for my two cents the Middle States Commission on Higher Education needs to butt-out and go back to aggravating people with stupid requirements regarding wording of syllabi.
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