One of the silliest notions regarding higher education is that schools are good when they have the stamp of approval from some accrediting body. That’s just not true — accredited colleges have graduated many students who learned little or nothing while enrolled. Accreditors do not rigorously assess the soundness of the curriculum and rigor of the classes. If it weren’t for the fact that accreditation is the key to eligibility for federal student aid money, no one would pay much attention to it.

In today’s Martin Center article, Adam Kissel points out a defect in the accreditation system: Namely, that when students seek to transfer credits, it can matter whether the institution where they were earned was accredited by one of the supposedly superior “regional” accreditors or some other group.

He writes, “The old, lazy shorthand of automatically counting “regional” accreditors as high-quality and all others as low-quality was probably never correct, and it’s still incorrect. It’s costing students time and money. It should end.”

Kissel focuses on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, one of the regional accreditation organizations that is supposedly better than the “national” accreditors. What’s so good about SACS? Let’s recall that the atrocious UNC scandal of useless courses to keep athletes (and other students too) happy with easy A’s went on for years, undetected by SACS.

Read the whole thing.