Taxpayers Deserve the Best from Colleges and Universities

Providing Expert Guidance for Lawmakers

State legislatures play a critical role in safeguarding the quality of and improving access to higher education by establishing policies that promote strong civic education standards, the free expression of ideas on campus, and prudent oversight of public resources. Read ACTA’s policy brief to learn how state legislators can support trustees and lead institutions to better outcomes for students and taxpayers.

ACTA regularly provides expert testimony to legislatures across the country, most recently in South Dakota in support of a measure to protect intellectual diversity, in Michigan in favor of free speech protections for college students, and in Maryland to endorse a measure to strengthen civic education at public universities. In prior years, ACTA has addressed numerous state legislative committees and has often testified before U.S. Senate and House committees.

Reforming Accreditation

For more than 60 years, accreditation has been the congressional safeguard for billions of taxpayer dollars disbursed in federal grants and loans to students. However, while Americans spend billions of their hard-earned funds, academic quality is down and costs are up. ACTA’s Accreditation: What It Is, What’s Wrong with It, and How to Fix It identifies three ways that Congress can revolutionize quality assurance in higher education so that college can become a better return on investment for millions of Americans.

ACTA is at the forefront of efforts to promote innovation by protecting institutional autonomy from accreditor overreach into trustee governance. Since 2006, ACTA Senior Fellow Anne Neal has served on the federal National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), where she is a strong advocate for reform of accreditation. Today, ACTA continues to drive the conversation by providing briefings on Capitol Hill and presenting thoughtful public commentary—including most recently a chapter addressing the systemic failures of accreditation for the seminal volume Accreditation on the Edge, published by Johns Hopkins University press.