Rhetorical Styles in University Accreditation: Judgmental Rules or Collaborative Creation?

• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12190
• Author: Daniel J. Royer
• Date: 01 May 2017

Rhetorical Styles in University

Accreditation: Judgmental Rules or

Collaborative Creation?

By DANIEL J. ROYER*

ABSTRACT. The university accreditation process is at a crossroads. After

more than a century of allowing universities to function as self-governing

institutions, legislatures are now demanding more accountability. That

puts pressure on the accreditation process to impose more external

rules, which are diametrically opposed to the high value placed on

heterogeneity and the spirit of free and independent inquiry. However,

accreditation, and the assessment practices that accompany it, need to

resist this restrictive methodology. Assessment is a rhetorical social

practice, and as such, the kind of rhetoric we use when we engage this

practice influences how we think and feel about the work and

contributes to the effectiveness of our practice. Aristotle’s distinction

between forensic and deliberative rhetoric provides a heuristic

framework for us to think about regional accreditation and internal

assessment of universities. A close look at recent accreditation guidelines

reveals that the context of much regional and local assessment calls for a

deliberative rhetoric (thinking together about how to create a common

future) rather than forensic rhetoric (gathering evidence to judge a past

event). However, habituated responses to existing assessment genres can

cause those involved in accreditation and assessment to fail to move

beyond a mentality of mere compliance and miss the opportunities of

progressive, aspirational assessment practice, a practice that requires a

deliberative rhetoric in order to set us on the open pathway of building

educational community.

*Professor of Writing, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. Author of

articles on rhetoric, writing assessment, and writing instruction, including “The Private

and the Public in Directed Self-Placement” (co-authored with Roger Gilles) in Writing

Assessment in the 21

st

Century. Essays in Honor of Edward M. White (2012, Hampton

Press).

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 3 (May, 2017).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12190

V

C2017 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Introduction

How do applicants who wish to study at a university make a judgment

about its quality and the character of the education they will receive?

How does a university define its particular role in the larger enterprise

of education? Systems of internal assessment and external accreditation

have been set up in North America to help answer these questions. But

there is an ever present danger that systems of assessment will become

legalistic in orientation and foster a compliance mentality that dulls the

curiosity, adventure, and change that are the hallmarks of a progressive

intellectual community. To the extent that occurs, the educational ideals

of the university are lostamidst the clutter of compliance.

Regional, as opposed to national, accreditation was established in

North America in order to accommodate and promote heterogeneity.

Historically, universities were self-governing academic assemblies. Fac-

ulty determined the value of the curriculum collectively, collegially, in

a way that embodied local and regional needs and values. Accredita-

tion was based on the assumption that the group of scholars and their

peers working together were the best judge of their institution and

whether it satisfied the intellectual requirements they set for them-

selves. Each university was expected to express distinctive intellectual

values or what we might call “schools of thought” as well as missions

and values appropriate to their local and regional contexts. Oxford

might disagree with Berlin about the nature of education, but no one

would have suggested that a bureaucracy should judge them both by

asinglestandard.

Until quite recently, the accreditation process, rooted in the tradi-

tional concept of institutional autonomy and self-governance, went

unchallenged. But as business models began to impose on higher

education, those traditions came under threat, and new standards of

uniformity sought to displace the spirit of inquiry with a singular, static

standard.

One tool that can help us understand how these cultural shifts and

changes happen, how a university succumbs to the pressure to be

more businesslike and less educational, and, finally, how we might find

our way free of this dilemma, is rhetoric, the study of how persuasive

language functions in social contexts. In this article, we shall examine

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