In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, Shattuck (1997) challenged today's higher education "quality" by suggesting colleges and universities have continually admitted ill-prepared high school graduates into gradually more diluted undergraduate programs (except science, math and engineering). As long as such "bloated systems of higher education" are dependent upon the tuition of increasing class sizes, colleges indirectly promote or at best maintain these soft standards of high school performance. He holds high schools responsible to conduct standardized tests for graduation requirements, and asks colleges and universities to raise their entrance requirements, proposing that "open admissions should become a thing of the past." Shattuck also suggests "accrediting agencies accommodate to present lax standards," adding they continue to perpetuate lax standards when they are "responsible to no one outside their profession they are charged to regulate" (p. B7).

The Task Force on Accreditation of Health Professions Education of the Pew Charitable Trust was charged with the goal to improve the health professions' accreditation processes so that they better meet evolving societal needs. Specifically noted was the idea that accreditation should have a role in improving education for the health professions.

Further, they support accreditation as a model for assessment and improvement and one that promotes interdisciplinary health professions' education, while minimizing duplication and waste, and enhancing flexibility and adaptability.

Other suggestions for future improvement include moving from evaluation of standards (the inspection function) to assessing improvements and serving as a catalyst for the improvement process. This will require benchmarking with other performance outcomes from other schools. They also suggest public participation involving multiple stakeholders and evaluating the effectiveness of the accreditation value.

My "desired future" accreditation process would have faculty, student and program data and information electronically submitted annually, trended for improvements over time and benchmarked with similar regional, public, private institutions that a school wishes to identify as its cohort schools. Then, teams of trained, paid faculty that could include someone from each program type would review the annual data and self-study for quality and improvement. No actual site visits need to occur unless suspicious information or other criteria as determined would suggest the need for random or scheduled visits. What advantages or disadvantages to this scenario does the audience envision? Imagine what we could learn from such national repositories of nursing data and information.