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September 19, 2008
Fun facts to know and tell - Accreditation or Property Protection - which came first??
In the course of writing a comment at Tim Burke's (about the post linked below) I happened to visit the website for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools website. I think of Middle States and its regional counterparts as accreditation agencies, though I have always understood that accreditation is not a neutral procedure.
I clicked on History.
They began as a group of college presidents organizing to protest the taxation of college property! The connection between lobbying government for tax benefits and assuring the government that association members are providing standardized education began early. From their history:
The genesis of the Association can be traced to a meeting of activist college presidents in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in February 1887. The meeting was held to protest a proposed tax on college properties and concluded with the consensus that education from early age through the university was in chaos. The presidents chartered themselves as the College Association of Pennsylvania, soon thereafter renamed the Association of the Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland.. . .
The initial objectives of the Association were to standardize the qualifications required for admission to college, to determine the desired characteristics for college preparatory schools, to recommend courses of study for both colleges and schools, to foster school and college relationships to each other and to the government, and to study and recommend best practices of organization and governance.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 19, 2008 2:49 PM