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The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) is a United States organization of degree-granting colleges and universities. It identifies its purpose as providing national advocacy for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation in order to certify the quality of higher education accrediting organizations, including regional, faith-based, private, career, and programmatic accrediting organizations. The organization has approximately 3,000 academic institutions as members, and currently recognizes approximately 60 accrediting organizations.〔(CHEA website ), accessed January 31, 2010〕 CHEA is based in Washington, DC. ==History== Established in 1996, CHEA is the successor to several earlier national nongovernmental associations formed to coordinate the U.S. accreditation process for higher education. In 1974, the Federation of Regional Accrediting Commissions of Higher Education (FRACHE; an association of regional accreditors) and the National Commission on Accrediting (an association of specialized and national accreditation agencies) had merged to form the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA), which had the purpose of ensuring the quality of accreditation. In 1993, COPA was dissolved because of tensions among the different types of accreditation agencies that formed its membership—ultimately the result of the increasing problems for higher education in the 1980s and 1990s. Problems with tuition increases, scandals, and doubts about the value of postsecondary higher education plagued all parts of the higher education sector. In particular, Congressional investigations of soaring student loan defaults and student aid abuses were highly critical of the laxity of accreditation and accreditation processes.〔Bloland, Harland G. (2001). ''Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation''. page 182.〕 Consequently, the 1992 amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965 included Program Integrity provisions designed to strengthen the gatekeeping triad for student loan guarantees and financial aid (i.e., state licensing bodies, accreditation associations, and Federal government). The higher education community viewed with alarm the establishment of State Postsecondary Review Entities (SPREs), which were given accrediting powers under special conditions. "When campus lobbyists heard about the legislation and realized that non-governmental accreditation was being replaced by a federal-state agency evaluation of institutions, including assessments of academic quality never before carried out by government, they 'went apoplectic', as one observer put it."〔Constance Ewing Cook, Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy (1998), The Story of the State Postsecondary Review Entities, pages 44-51. The quotation here is from page 47.〕 Early in 1993, the regional accreditors voted to leave COPA, indicating their dissatisfaction with COPA's political representation in the U.S. Congress, which representation was widely viewed as ineffective, particularly in regard to the new legislation establishing the SPREs. In April 1993, COPA voted to disband itself by the end of the year.〔Bloland, Harland G. (2001), ''Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation'', Chapter 3, and page 39.〕 Work by the National Policy Board on Higher Education Institutional Accreditation (NPB), and other groups laid the groundwork for a national successor to COPA. Among their concerns were establishing a more grassroots membership, billing and fees, and advisory role of the accrediting associations, and improving the public image of accrediting and improving the ability to lobby the Federal government.〔Harland G. Bloland, Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (2001)〕〔Jane Wellman: Recognition of Accreditation Organizations: A Comparison of Policy & Practice of Voluntary Accreditation and The United States Department of Education CHEA January 1998〕 CHEA's immediate predecessor was the Council for Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation (CORPA), which was formed following the dissolution of COPA. CHEA grandfathered in those accrediting associations recognized by COPA, provided that more than half the institutions that they accredited granted degrees.〔Bloland, Harland G. (2001), ''Creating the Council for Higher Education Accreditation'', page 183.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Council for Higher Education Accreditation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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