Remember Stephen Bailey? He was the former Vice President of the American Council on Education who, in 1978, returned to academe to write what became a wake up call for the off-duty, voluntary education program. He was the author of the Bailey Report. Yes, that Stephen Bailey. He lambasted what he considered institutions of dubious credibility that were operating on military installations. But he didn’t stop there. He pressed the issue in academic publications and embarrassed the military into taking a long hard look at internal processes that should have been in place to ensure the quality of institutions allowed to offer programs to military personnel.

The rest is history. A multibase fact finding visit substantiated much of Bailey’s concerns. To its credit, the Department of Defense moved quickly to establish criteria that installations and institutions alike had to abide by when bringing academic programs onto defense installations. As a result, program quality became integral even to the issuance of military tuition assistance. Generational improvements of those criteria still exist today as enclosures to the Department of Defense Instruction that provides policy for the DoD Voluntary Education Program.

Everyone knew that the system could not vet each institution to determine its quality every time a military student applied for tuition assistance. The system had to come up with a shortcut that would automatically indicate that the program an institution offered on military installations met a quality test … a test that would go unchallenged and not turn each TA application into an investigative quagmire focused on proof of institutional or program quality that would meet the scrutiny of even a Stephen Bailey.

All concerned searched for a quality indicator that would pass the academic quality test. The litmus test of choice was an obvious no brainer. A time-tested method already existed for determination of whether an Institution passed academic muster or not. The litmus test of the ‘70s was regional accreditation, then the hallmark of quality in the academic community. Actually, at the time, it was the only game in town.

Regional accreditation answered the question concerning which institutions could or could not be invited onto military installations to offer academic programs. It also became the benchmark against which voluntary education staffs measured the ability to approve TA requests for academic programs military students were pursuing at off base locations. If the program wasn’t regionally accredited, it didn’t qualify for TA.

Regional accreditation, regional accreditation, regional accreditation. We pounded that quality benchmark into the minds and molecular structure of our education counselors and education specialists. They became the Gatekeepers of Quality for Voluntary Education system-wide. They informed military students for decades that TA couldn’t be used to pay for courses whose institutions didn’t have regional accreditation. Voluntary Education had made it; it had arrived. It was now one of the academic purists. If a program weren’t regionally accredited, it wasn’t real; it didn’t count.

Everything was humming along. Ying and yang were in harmony. The planets were revolving around the Sun with unquestioned certitude. Quality was good. Regional accreditation was quality. Thus regional accreditation was good. If it weren’t regionally accredited, how could it be good? And thus TA became linked at the hip with regional accreditation. TA and regional accreditation were good. Nothing else was good or could be good. Right? Wrong.

Wrong because of sea changes taking place in the academic world ... and because of DoD’s efforts to adjust to those sea changes. Other highly respected, non-regional accrediting agencies came on the scene. The National Homestudy Council, now the Distance Education and Training Council, a highly respected national accrediting agency, among others, became mainstream. The Veterans Administration, now Department of Veterans Affairs, began to approve many nationally accredited programs for receipt of veterans educational benefits.

The voluntary education program woke up one morning to find that regional accreditation was no longer the only quality game in town. Given that, how could it continue to stick its head in the sand and refuse to provide one form of federal educational assistance for a program that another federal agency was providing federal education money to? It couldn’t. DoD proactively looked at the criteria listed in its Voluntary Education Instruction and changed the checkpoint that had long been the hallmark against which our Gatekeepers measured the quality and acceptability of existing academic programs.

DoD decided that it no longer belonged in the business of determining what was and was not acceptable academically. A determination was made that role should be the purview of the department of government that had responsibility for education. To that end, verbiage in the DoD Instruction for Voluntary Education was changed effective 1999. Tuition assistance would now be issued for coursework offered by institutions accredited by accrediting agencies recognized by the US Department of Education. Regional accreditation was no longer the quality benchmark against which local education staffs could determine tuition assistance eligibility.

What did that mean for the Gatekeepers? How did this impact on the role that they had played so well for so long in ensuring tuition assistance dollars were not spent on programs that did not meet the requisite litmus test of regional accreditation? Basically, they had to change the way they did business. They were now required to issue tuition for coursework for students who expressed a desire to attend institutions accredited by other recognized accrediting agencies. They could no longer deny issuance of TA for programs offered by non-regionally accredited institutions. After twenty years of certainty about what equated to quality, culture shock!

How were they to react to changing what had heretofore become a genetically correct quality check? Previously, the answer had become ingrained in their very pores as to what were good programs and what programs didn’t meet the test. Life, from that perspective, had been quite simple. Now it was becoming something else. Counselors and education staff were now torn between what had long been the norm and what had become the new rule of doing business. But it was not easy. Although concerned that students might pursue a degree at, let’s say a nationally accredited institution, and although concerned that courses offered by the nationally accredited institution of choice might not transfer to another institution should the student decide later to pursue a different degree with a different institution accredited by a different accrediting agency, those we depended on for so long to maintain quality and protect the public trough had to let go and play a new role. They had to familiarize students with programs accredited by new, different accrediting agencies, and encourage their clientele to review the transferability possibility of courses from one institution to another, and to let those clients be so bold as to make their own academic life decisions about what courses and degrees to pursue … without bias toward or against an institution or the agencies that accredit them.

That was a freeing but burdensome transition, allthewhile a process that had to occur for several very good reasons. In one respect, allowing the client to do the analysis necessary to make the life impacting enrollment decisions needed only prepared them for some of the harder decisions they would have to make in the future about graduate school and the like. This shifted the burden from the counselor to the student where it really belonged anyway. It ensured they weighed the pros and cons of decisions that had implications about their own future.

But it also did something else. It ensured that government counselors weren’t proactively discouraging participation in one program over another. Let me repeat that. It ensured that government counselors weren’t proactively discouraging participation in one program over another. Why was that important? Because, as noted earlier, it allowed the students to make their own life decisions about what academically acceptable program they wanted to pursue; that decision should have rested with the client all along. But, even more importantly, from the government’s perspective, and the individual employee’s perspective, it removed the professional government education staff member from a situation that could place both them and the government at risk.

In translation, what does all this mean? What’s the moral of the story? First, simply stated, there are a lot of top-notch institutions accredited by numerous accrediting agencies recognized by the Department of Education. And we should never balk at sharing those many options with students or potential students. Second, education center staff members should not be turning down requests for TA submitted by students who want to attend courses taught by those institutions. That is the student’s choice. Third, staff can and should counsel potential attendees about the implications about transferability; but they should let the student make all of the decisions about the significance of that as it relates to what program they ultimately decide to pursue.

The bottom line? Cautioned concern intended to save the student from having to repeat a course or a desire to limit to the fullest extent possible the repetitious outlay of TA funds for similar or like courses is okay … and still encouraged. But overt bias for an institution accredited by one accrediting agency over another, based on an outdated perception of what accrediting agency reflects the proper amount of quality, is not. As long as the institution meets the Department of Education test of quality noted earlier, that is sufficient. Both of these issues become extremely important as the Joint Statement on the Transfer and Award of Credit becomes more and more a part of academe’s landscape. Particularly since it is manifest that academe, and those working on its periphery, find ways to accommodate and transcript learning from whatever source, so that students don’t have to repeat it and pay for it again and again.

Eventually, those concerned with the quality of that learning will become comfortable with the fact that the new norm relevant academic quality is as safe and sound as the old one. And to be sure, I am comfortable that they, and those of like mind, will find that Stephen Bailey’s concern for the quality of that learning will have been addressed, tested and met. Determining whether the program of study our clients are interested in is the role of the recognized accrediting agencies. We must trust and value the results of their professional reviews, deliberations and decisions. That is their role. That is their purpose. We, in turn, must make the programs they sanction available to our client base, and provide the funding available to those who choose to pursue programs accredited by one of those recognized agencies. That is our job.

However, getting from here to there has seen its share of road bumps. That aside, making sure that happens now, as soon as possible, falls on the shoulders of a host of players: this office, the Service headquarters, their major commands or regional offices, those managing each installation education office, as well as the counselors working directly with the students. There is no time better than the present to ensure that this becomes as ingrained in our everyday thought processes and habits as did the quality test of the past. We must become the honest brokers and advocates for this new mindset and we must do so now.

Prepared for the September 2003 edition of The Military Educator