GUEST COLUMN ple, composite faculty resources needed for a graduate focus on creation and performance are different than for a focus on scholarship. Accreditation reviewers concentrate first on whether a particular institution is fulfilling the requirements of the standards consistent with its mission and programs offered, and whether conditions present enable them to project that applicable standards can continue to be met during the next accreditation period. The reviewers then concentrate on how the review can help the institution improve and develop productively, primarily in terms the institution sets for itself, but also in terms of how the profession is developing. However, the accreditation decision is based only on present and projected fulfillment of published standards. What about quality? Where does it come from? The arts accrediting associations believe that it comes primarily from individuals. Therefore, a fundamental purpose of accreditation is to support the work of individuals, especially students, but also faculty and administrators and all others associated with teaching and learning. Standards can set forth and promote conditions, elements, and attributes of quality, but they do not in themselves constitute quality. Standards can provide a framework for individual and institutional pursuit of quality, but the proof of achievement is always in the details of specific works of art, scholarship, teaching, and so forth. In most senses, we have standards because we have art, not art because we have standards. This is why standards are developed and applied in a system of reason and cooperation that enables a large group of institutions and programs to help each other individually and specifically. This brief overview makes clear how so many of the principles underlying arts accreditation, and indeed all accreditation are the same as those underlying the governmental structure of the United States. Separations of powers, delineations of authority, checks and balances, rule of laws or standards established democratically, all support prudent balances among what is held in common and what is the responsibility of local and individual decision makers. Indeed, our laws about education have traditionally assured that the federal government may not intrude into decisions about aca-
demic matters. In other words, the United States has never embraced the concept of a federal ministry of education. Our statues, regulations, and policies reflect a belief that local responsibility works better that centralized control. Over the last two decades, certain interests have advocated one-size-fits-all assessments and comparisons. Their arguments rest on several fallacies, among them, institutions are 100% responsible for every student’s education, and all institutions are the same. Obviously, neither is true. But if these interests are to prevail it is essential to create conditions that invite or require people and organizations to act as though they were true. The ramifications are fairly direct:
Being accredited in the arts means something far beyond meeting standards or public notice of accredited status or membership in large national organizations. policies that force all institutions to be the same are centralizing policies. To enforce such policies, one must have centralization of academic authority far beyond the campus level, or even the state system level. The federal relationship with accreditation is too complex to describe here, but suffice it to say that in order to preserve the American principles we have outlined, extreme care must be taken with legislation and regulation lest accreditation become a means for federal centralization and ultimately, direct control over institutions. For more than four years, staff members of the arts accreditation associations have been invited to play important negotiating roles with regard to the accreditation portion of the federal Higher Education Act. Through work in small groups of delegates representing accreditors and institutions, and eventually by gaining broader under-
Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts
standing in higher education and bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, new legislative language has been drafted making clearer than ever that institutions and accreditors, not the federal government, have responsibilities for specific and common standards and for academic decisions. We hope the final bill contains this language. Efforts of this kind depend on being organized in advance, and on having years of experience as a basis for working with many sectors influencing education policy. Obviously, being accredited in the arts means something far beyond meeting standards or public notice of accredited status or membership in large national organizations. For alumni, faculty, administrators, and others concerned about a specific institution such as University of Nebraska –Lincoln, it means a commitment to and the results of serious, local, in-depth analysis that supports development of the arts discipline being considered, all in the context of peer review against national standards. For all institutions and individuals involved, it means, in part embracing and advancing a set of assessment values consistent with the way the arts work, and the way excellence in the arts is produced and evaluated. It means a perpetual investment in mutual responsibility and reciprocity, both far larger, richer, and more productive concepts than one-way accountability. And, it demonstrates publicly a continuing commitment to rigorous thought, planning, and action consistent with tenacious pursuit of high achievement in the content of one or more arts disciplines. For many years, hundreds of institutions have helped to build and promote these values and the achievements these values nurture to their own benefit and to the benefit of the arts in higher education, the United States, and the world. This is a powerful and ever-radiating legacy and potentiality, a contribution to self and community that ennobles, enriches, and teaches as it proceeds. For more information, please visit www.arts-accredit.org Samuel Hope is executive director of the National Office for Arts Accreditation and an executive editor of Arts Education Policy Review.
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