Having been involved in academia for quite a while now, there are a number of salient points being raised by the differing sides here.
One of the first realities is that higher education, indeed the academy, is slow to change its processes and procedures. This is maddeningly frustrating for many. However, we've seen this all before with other issues including the adoption of technology within the educational process. It is increasingly difficult to ignore the massive shifts in society and technology as they can aid our academic and intellectual pursuits.
On the other hand, with the massive proliferation of quick start programs and for-profit colleges that are ruining the lives of thousands, there needs to be a balance.
I believe accreditation provides that balance. It is a third-party system of checks and balances that allows interested students (who don't have the time or knowledge of what makes a good institution) understand what institutions are best set up for their growth.
Its funny, the biggest arguments against accreditation are often voiced by people who have unaccredited degrees. I rarely hear any of my colleagues from accredited institutions, or with substantial degrees from said institutions, making a case of unaccredited colleges and universities. Instead, they know, mostly from experience and education, that far too many unaccredited institutions provide no robust framework of education and often spit out students who lack basic educational aptitude skills. We end up having to actually educate these students on the basics, even at an advanced level, before being able to instruct them on the subject matter.
So what should we do?
To say accreditation standards only rely on budgets, library size and a few other details misses the point. In fact, the most rigorous accreditation standards are based on generally accepted principals of education that have, over the last several hundred years, produced the best results.
Accreditation also looks at the nature of those leading institutions and their credential. I'm sorry but we can see massively disparate educational aptitudes when considering professors with terminal degrees with significant and accredited institutions vs. those without from unaccredited. We also know that institutions that have taken care of their financial burdens and properly stewarded the funds entrusted to them will be able to see their academic years all the way through. How many unaccredited institutions, even in the last year, have gone belly-up halfway through a year? It doesn't help students to have to worry if their professors are getting paid, and whether they can eat on campus next week.
Likewise, as it deals with the nature of libraries, yes there is a host of information available online and through the proper databases. However, there is a ton of other literature that isn't available and will never be available through online programs. Some of this is because of money and it is also because of the nature of scholarship. Take, for instance, work in Christology. The most important theological discourses on Christology in the last 200 years have taken place in German and French and most of the these works have not been translated into English. They aren't available online but you can find them in the catacombs of very good theological libraries. Along these lines, about sixteen of the most important journal articles on Christology (generally) in the last twenty years are in journals that are not online nor accessible through mircofilm. One must find these journals in hard-copy and read the articles there. A well stocked research library provides such things. So we need research libraries to have resources like these accessible to students. This is the reality of actual scholarship. Paltry libraries indicate a paltry learning environment.
Accreditation might well be a bit of over-regulation but it is necessary to ensure the proper delivery of quality education.
As we continue to see, educational institutions that choose not to pursue accreditation are often discovered to be cutting corners in other areas. Not all but far too many. The fly-by-night for profit colleges that are devastating students are the next wave of issues. The lies perpetrated by University of Phoenix commercials are a shame and indicate what lengths corruption will go to justifying itself. I have no love for those kinds of places. All this to say that there remains a reasonable place for accreditation.
