The Wall Street Journal has an interesting report, “The Watchdogs of College Education Rarely Bite”, which reviews the current state of four-year college accreditation. It makes a case that accreditation, at least for the four-year colleges, needs an overhaul.

Who accredits colleges? The US Department of Education (DOE) recognizes 38 accreditors who act as gatekeepers of federal aid to college students. Federal student aid can only be used at accredited schools. About 90% of accredited four-year colleges are overseen by an accreditor from one of the six geographic regions. These six oversee more than 3,000 US colleges, public and private. Other colleges are overseen by faith-based accreditors, or groups that review vocational schools.

The WSJ found that in the past 15 years, those six accreditors have rescinded the membership of just 26 educational institutions. Their report is silent on how many colleges are on probation. Typically, schools on probation have 5 years to make it back to an accredited status.

They found a link between college graduation rates and student default rates on college loans:

(Some may be confused by the graph’s notation of average graduation rates and loan default rates. The red bars reflect the number of colleges with those rates, not a graphical representation of the percentages.)

The article examined graduation rates and student loan defaults. Not a bad start if you wanted to measure a school: we should want high graduation rates, and we want low student loan default rates, both as matters of public policy. They compared these numbers to a baseline, the average for schools that have lost accreditation since 2000. The question implied by the WSJ is if a school has a lower graduation rate or a higher default rate than the baseline numbers, should they keep their accreditation?

The WSJ methodology took the list of accredited colleges that were posted on the accreditors’ websites. For each of those colleges, the Journal then examined DOE statistics on graduation rates, student aid and loan default rates. The analysis was limited to four-year colleges that offered at least a bachelor’s degree. Colleges where students received no federal aid weren’t included in the analysis.

The DOE is barred by law from telling the 38 accreditors how to do their job. The Obama administration recognized the problem and in 2013, proposed an end-run, tying access to loans and grants to a new ratings system that would compare colleges on measurements such as graduation rate, student debt and income after graduation. It was greeted by mixed reviews by the education establishment, who felt as usual, that the data would be misinterpreted and bad decisions would follow.

The idea had little Republican support, since they would prefer to eliminate the DOE, not expand its brief. Most Republicans, starting with Rick Perry in 2012, object to the federal government’s financing of students, and have called for the downsizing or elimination of the DOE. A few candidates for 2016 have followed Perry’s lead. It’s the position of Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, who all think that setting standards should be a local responsibility.

The Republican opposition is not new. Opposition to the DOE began in 1979 when it became a Cabinet-level department. It is opposed mainly by conservatives, who see the department as undermining of states’ rights, and libertarians who believe it is an unnecessary and illegal federal intrusion into local affairs. Republicans all believe in letting Mr. Market do his job. That of course, is the position favored by the for-profit schools who have been big donors to Republican candidates.

So, how does a family with a prospective college freshman move forward? Say they are trying to compare two schools, one with a higher graduation rate than the other. Is the school with the higher graduation rate better? Or could the other school with a lower rate be better because it takes chances on more students?

Similarly, higher loan default rates should be viewed in context. Engineering schools tend to graduate students who find jobs quickly and easily, but that doesn’t mean every school should become an engineering school.

We need to connect the dots and understand that we can’t produce more college grads by pretending all kids are prepared for it. They are not. Our colleges enroll many woefully unprepared kids, who can’t make the grade, but can run up large debts.

The way to get more kids through college: Force a good K-12 education back into K-12 where it belongs.