Logo of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) is a United States organization of degree-granting colleges and universities. Its purposes include providing national advocacy for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation and providing scrutiny and certification of the quality of higher education accrediting organizations, including regional, faith-based, private career, and programmatic accrediting organizations.^[1]

CHEA counts approximately 3,000 academic institutions as members and currently recognizes 60 accrediting organizations.^[1]

[edit] History

Established in 1996, CHEA is the successor to several earlier national nongovernmental associations formed to coordinate the U.S. accreditation process. In 1974, the Federation of Regional Accrediting Commissions of Higher Education (FRACHE; an association of regional accreditors) and the National Commission on Accrediting (an association of specialized and national accreditation agencies) had merged to form the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA), which had the purpose of promoting and ensuring the quality of accreditation. COPA served this function until 1993, when it was dissolved due to tensions among the different types of accreditation agencies that formed its membership. CHEA's immediate predecessor was the Council for Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation (CORPA), which was formed following the dissolution of COPA.^[2]

Each accreditor is independent, which means the requirements vary from group to group. The association is based in Washington DC. The CHEA website contains a searchable database to check accreditation status of approved accreditation agencies, accredited schools, or schools currently in the process of getting accreditation (i.e., "candidates" for accreditation).^[3] CHEA's "user agreement for publications of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation" states that it does not guarantee that all accredited schools are listed in the database.

[edit] CHEA Board members

John D. Wiley, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the chairman of the CHEA Board of Directors. A list of current CHEA board members is available at the CHEA web site.^[4]

[edit] See also

• List of recognized accreditation associations of higher learning
• Educational accreditation

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• CHEA.org – Official website

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