Dear Representative: On behalf of the American Council on Education and the undersigned higher education associations, we encourage your support of language in the House Labor-HHS appropriations bill restricting the Department of Education’s ability to unilaterally regulate accreditation in FY 2008.

The Association of American Universities (AAU), which comprises 60 leading public and private research universities in the United States and two in Canada, has committed to collecting and providing to the public basic information about undergraduate student performance, such as graduation rates, time to degree, and careers pursued following graduation.

The Department of Education is developing new regulations that would give the government unprecedented control over accrediting agencies and institutions of higher education..

The Department of Education is currently attempting to use a process known as “negotiated rulemaking” to make fundamental changes in the accreditation system. The proposals it has advanced would replace the current peer review model with a top-heavy federal regulatory model—creating a...