Shifting Alliances in the Accreditation of Higher Education: On the ...

system that would later emerge. This section relies heavily upon historical documents and
sections of it are taken from an earlier article that I have co-authored: A. Lee Fritschler,
Paul Weissburg and Phillip Magness (2008). ―Changing Relationships with Governments
in Europe and the US: Balancing Quality Concerns with the Desire for Intellectual
Independence in the University.‖ In: Amaral, Alberto (ed) Essays in Supportive Peer
Review. Hauppauge, NY: NOVA Science Publishers, Inc. I thank both of my co-authors
for their permission to use this material.
The first section of Chapter Five then examines the origins of the accreditation
system and argues that the relationship between the accreditation agencies and the
existing institutions of higher education was not a principal-agent dynamic as much as it
was a case of intra-industry competition. That is to say, the original accreditation
agencies were of, by, and for the higher education sector; they were used by schools of
high quality to distinguish themselves from other, less prestigious institutions. This
section relies heavily upon several scholarly articles written about early accreditation in
the United States and, in particular, upon the following seminal works: Frederick
Rudolph‘s The American College & University: A History, 2 nd edition (1990), John R.
Thelin‘s A History of American Higher Education (2004), Arthur M. Cohen‘s The
Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary
System (1998), and Understanding Accreditation: Contemporary Perspectives on Issues
and Practices in Evaluating Educational Quality, edited by Kenneth E. Young, Charles M.
Chambers, H.R. Kells, and Associates (1983).
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