07/03/96

Contact: President Robert Glidden, 614-593-1303

ATHENS, Ohio -- Ohio University President Robert Glidden has been elected chairman of a new national board that will oversee higher education accreditation.

The board, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), was established in May by a vote of more than 1,400 college and university presidents. It was set up to oversee the country's six regional accreditors of colleges and universities and about 50 other accreditors of professional schools and specialized schools, such as theological schools.

At its meeting this week (July 1-2), the 15-member CHEA Board of Directors elected Glidden as its chair and Larry Braskamp, education dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as the executive director. Both men will serve one year in their leadership posts. Glidden said one of the first duties will be to organize a national search for a full-time chief executive officer.

CHEA's responsibilities will include debating processes that improve accreditation, mediating disputes and fostering communication between and among accrediting bodies and the higher education community. The nation's colleges and universities were left without such an organization when the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA) disbanded in 1993 amid criticism that it was ineffectual.

"The United States is one of the few countries in the world without a national ministry of education, and we have benefited by that fact," Glidden said. "We have voluntary peer review that is democratic in its roots and efforts. We don't want the federal government telling institutions what they can teach and how to teach it. In order for voluntary peer review to work, it requires cooperation between higher education institutions and the various accrediting agencies."

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Glidden said one of the top priorities for CHEA will be to prepare for the next five-year extension of the Higher Education Act, which Congress is to consider in 1997.

Glidden is also on the six-member executive committee that the council appointed. Other members are: John T. Casteen III, president of the University of Virginia; Vera King Farris, president of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey; Gordon Halland, president of Gettysburg College; Ira Lechner, a lawyer and trustee at Randolph-Macon College; and Alfredo de los Santos, Jr., vice-chancellor for educational development at Maricopa Community Colleges.