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Historical Perspectives onRegional Accreditation inU.S. Higher Education: TheOrigins of the North CentralAssociationNeil McDowell Shawen aa University of VirginiaPublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Neil McDowell Shawen (1984) Historical Perspectives onRegional Accreditation in U.S. Higher Education: The Origins of the NorthCentral Association, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 16:1,17-27, DOI: 10.1080/0022062840160103

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Historical Perspectives on RegionalAccreditation in U.S. Higher Education:The Origins of the North CentralAssociation

One annoying burr on the thorny question of who will control U.S. higher educationis the problem of accreditation. Our accrediting of colleges and universities, quite the'non-system to the second power' Harold Howe once described,' is accomplished inboth direct and indirect, de facto fashion by several different concerns - stategovernments, the federal government, regional associations, and severalWashington-based agencies quartered at One Dupont Circle. A balance whichcurrently exists between the federal and state governments and the 'regionals'becomes daily more precarious as pressure for greater fiscal accountability mountsand the clamour for what amounts to consumer protection in higher education rises.In a monograph prepared for the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation, anaspiring peacemaker in the struggle, William A. Kaplin, is concerned that a solution toaccreditation and other higher education problems may well involve a re-casting ofthe respective roles played by these three agencies.2

Of these three sometime rivals, the regional associations may be the leastunderstood. Their extra-legal, nongovernmental, 'voluntary' nature seems to beliethe power they wield. Further, their various publications cultivate the image that theyare supportive, positive thinking, facilitators of institutional self-scrutiny. Yet foryears some college administrators have seen the 'devils'3 as expensive nuisanceswhich conspire against curriculum experimentation and individuality, threatenacademic freedom and, in sum, bite the hand of the college masters who brought theminto the world. The remarks of Cloyd H. Marvin, long-time president of GeorgeWashington University, are fairly typical of this opposition: 'Colleges anduniversities cannot function as trusted, free institutions of higher learning unless theirfaculties and the administrations representing them are kept free from interference bystandardizing organizations.'4

In light of this disagreement, a consideration of the historical context in which theseagencies were born is helpful. Then, too, a detailed look at the origins of one regionalin particular, the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, mayhelp to suggest ways in which these associations can continue to serve as viable toolsfor dealing with the nation's higher education problems. Surveys of the history ofAmerican higher education typically mention in passing that the first regionalassociation, the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, wasformed in 1885 as the result of a prior meeting between Massachusetts preparatoryand high school teachers and President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard. They may alsopoint out that this organization and others springing up regionally not long thereafterwere intended to 'bring together for the common good educators and educational

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institutions from the same geographical area'5 or, more specifically, to improvearticulation between high schools and colleges on such matters as secondarycurriculum and college entrance requirements and to clarify their respectiveinstructional roles. Accounts usually close by observing that these agenciesundertook the accrediting of colleges and universities only after they had beenmaking qualitative judgments about secondary schools for some time and aftervarious other agencies, both public and private, had taken a stab at collegiateaccreditation and failed. Such descriptions are accurate as far as they go. Closerobservation, however, of national forces and trends of thought as they influencedlater 19th-century education is far more revealing.

Despite the ravages of civil war, the 19th century saw remarkable growth interritory, population, and industry. The U.S. more than quadrupled in size,swelled its numbers by natural increase and immigrant inundation, and, aided bywartime production demands, made a rapid conversion from a rural-agrarian to anurban-industrial society. Unfortunately, rapid growth, then as now, was notwithout its seamier side. Notions of laissez-faire, social Darwinism, suspicion offederal bigness, and other philosophies similarly designed to let nature take itscourse resulted in a quagmire of social injustice and economic inequity.

By the 1880s, however, diverse forces had begun to counteract the wrongs andinconsistencies born of unbridled competition and growth. Much celebrated'muckrakers' clawed at social evils real and imagined. The federal government,sporting a merit-based, bureaucratic civil service, began to show more interest inthe machinations of big business. The creation of an Interstate CommerceCommission and the passage of embryonic anti-trust legislation pointed to a moreaggressive federal role in regulating the complex business establishment. Theindustrial magnates themselves, whether 'robber barons' or 'captains of industry',turned more and more to trusts and other combinations to avert the worst excessesof cutthroat competition. Some even poured back into society through acts ofphilanthropy millions of dollars from the fortunes they had amassed. The 1880sand 1890s, then, were a time when, by public and private means, the United Statessought reform and regulation in order to consolidate gains and mitigate ill effectsof an earlier period of unguarded expansion.

As it invariably does, education reflected this trend. During the period 1860-90over two hundred new 'higher' institutions appeared,6 while state governments,true to their laissez-faire philosophy, slept. Even the colleges themselves seemedunconcerned for the courses being offered, the students being accepted, and thedegrees being conferred. Colleges thrown together for assorted reasons, somedoubtless more legitimate than others, competed for a 'grab-bag' of students andin so doing often extended themselves beyond their financial and instructionalcapabilities. As early as 1870 a newly created United States Bureau of Educationmanaged to count 369 degree-granting institutions;7 how many it may havemissed is anybody's guess. While the majority of these ventures did not survive,new schools appeared in hydra-like fashion to replace the old.

Growth and chaos at the secondary level were even more dramatic. During thisperiod the principle of publicly funded secondary education became firmlyestablished, and the number of youngsters eligible to attend the modern high

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school soared. Significantly, the two years immediately prior to the birth of theNorth Central Association, 1893-95, saw the greatest two-year increase in theschool age population up to that time.8 Clearly, private academy and public highschool alike operated with little more standardization or commonality of purposethan their counterparts in the college sector. William K. Selden recreates theconfusion of the situation: 'Students being enrolled in increasing numbers frommore secondary schools by institutions being founded at a rapid rate . . . offeringcourses from agriculture to zoology'.9 American education by the end of thecentury had indeed become 'a variegated hodgepodge of uncoordinated practices -in school and college alike - which had never undergone any screening fromanybody, and many which were shoddy, futile, and absurd beyond anything wenow conceive of'.10 One suspects that our educators of the period did not need tohear the observation by a French Minister of Education that 'the distinctionbetween secondary and higher education [was] not clearly established'; they weredoubtless becoming well aware of it themselves."

But just as the U.S. moved in mysterious ways to curb the worst consequencesof its social and economic growth, so too in education school principals andcollege presidents took steps to salvage some measure of order out of a diversitywhich had degenerated into chaos. In so doing, they turned to the models which arelatively sophisticated business community had already set for them.

It is difficult to determine just how strong the allegiance between business andacademe actually was. Hugh Hawkins, bringing together essays on the growth ofthe American university, elected to name his volume The Emerging University andIndustrial America, suggesting that the relationship was close indeed.12 We knowthat corporate money began to pour into college budgets, followed predictably byincreased corporate influence in the shaping of school policies. It is small wonderthat, as Laurence Veysey and others have noted, universities adapted businessmodels to their own educational enterprise.13

With these models in mind, one could argue that the popularization of theelective system and the broadening of collegiate curriculum to include appliedsciences and modern languages were essentially marketing strategies to broadenthe base of a growingly pragmatic, utiltarian market. More defencible, it seems, isthe idea that the new breed of professional college administrators running collegecampuses by the 1870s and 1880s, Eliot, Angell, Harper, Gilman, and others, wasa rather scholarly mutation of a strain of higher echelon administrator whichprivate business (and to some extent the federal government) had been cultivatingfor years.

It is in the context of this strange marriage between the college and big businessthat the rise of regional 'accrediting' associations must be viewed. Just as privatecompanies turned more and more toward patterns of consolidation, combination,and other cooperative arrangements, colleges and secondary schools came torealize the damaging effects of their own growth and sought a better understand-ing of their respective missions and the establishment of standards appropriate toeach. It might be stretching the point to contend that the North Central and otherswere vertical trusts designed to guarantee the quality of the education enterprisefrom raw student material to finished product. To the extent that regional

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associations began as belated corrective responses to chaotic effects of incredible19th-century growth, suffice it to say that they were very much the product oftheir times.

There were, however, factors other than some broad national Zeitgeist at work inthe creation of regional associations. The mere fact that they were, after all,regional rather than national gatherings of concerned individuals suggests thatlocal energies and issues were involved. By way of illustration, a detailed look atthe events leading to the founding of the North Central Association reveals theextent to which regional forces came into play.

On 29 and 30 March 1895, thirty-six educators from seven North Central statesmet at Northwestern University to consider the feasibility of forming a co-operative 'association of colleges and secondary schools of the North CentralStates, representative of universities, colleges, scientific schools, normal schools,high schools, and academies'.14 This august gathering included some twentycollege and university presidents and a number of public school principals andsuperintendents. The fruit of their collective labours was the North CentralAssociation.

The man most directly responsible for bringing these men together was W. H.Butts, then principal of the Michigan Military Academy at Orchard Lake,Michigan. During a visit to New England in 1894 Butts had noted with envy thesuccess private school headmasters had enjoyed in promoting dialogue andreaching understandings with regional colleges through the formation of a NewEngland Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.15 He had even gone sofar as to meet with President Eliot of Harvard to receive his endorsement for asimilar undertaking in the Midwest.16 Thus armed, Butts returned to pursue thematter with President Angell of the University of Michigan. Angell, initiallylukewarm to the scheme, suggested that Butts contact other university presidentsfor their reaction. Rogers of Northwestern, Adams of Wisconsin, and Harper ofthe University of Chicago lent more encouraging ears, Harper being said to haveleapt from his chair proclaiming, 'Excellent! Excellent! A splendid idea'.17

Knowing, however, that nominal support by these men was not enough, Buttssought the backing of an educational organization already in existence. He foundsuch a group in the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, a state-wide gathering ofsecondary and higher educators which had met regularly since 1886. Buttsaddressed the meeting of the club in the autumn of 1894 and found broad supportfor his proposal. It was accordingly resolved that the presidents of the Universityof Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, and theUniversity of Chicago, in conjunction with the club, would draft a letter toschools and colleges in the North Central states inviting them to send representa-tives to a meeting scheduled for the following year to consider the possibility offorming an association.18 Such a letter was drafted and sent. Included in the letterwere five rather thought-provoking questions: 1. Is it desirable and practicable toform an association? 2. If so, what state should comprise the territory in which itis to act? 3. What shall be the qualifications for membership? 4. How often andwhere shall the association meet? 5. Shall steps be taken looking to cooperationwith the New England and Middle States Associations in securing greater

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uniformity in secondary instruction and in the requirements for admission tocollege?19

The first meeting held was limited to organizational matters, the drafting of aconstitution, the election of officers, etc. A second meeting one year later is farmore important from a substantive point of view as the topics considered reflectthe association's concern for greater school-college articulation and standardizationwhich had led to the North Central's birth. Among the chief issues weredefinitions of a college and a secondary school, entrance requirements in history,and the systematizing of admissions policies by colleges and universities.20

It is obvious that the association, when it settled down to business, did notconceive of itself as an accrediting agency in any modern sense of the term. ArticleIV of the body's constitution guarded against any taint of coercion in theassociation's actions: 'All decisions of the Association bearing upon the policy andthe management of higher and of secondary institutions are understood to beadvisory in their character'.21 What is not so obvious, however, is that theassumption of an accrediting function is implicit in the tone of the initial issuesraised. The agreed upon definitions of'secondary school' and 'college' could onlyhave led to the identification of certain schools which did not qualify under thecriteria developed. This constituted a basic form of accreditation.

Then, too, there is the third of the five 'food for thought' questions appended tothe original letter of invitation. These two components taken together suggest thatfrom its inception the association, whether it chose to address the matter in itsopen meetings or not, did conceive of itself as a kind of guild which included those'master' institutions which had satisfied some established requirements but whichpurposely excluded certain other institutions which had not. The first thirty yearsof the association are the story of how a tacit qualitative judgment became, first atthe secondary and then at the college level, an explicit function of the organization.

The fact that America's response to poor school-college articulation took theform of regional rather than national organizations, however curious it may seemto educators today, is really not surprising. Throughout the 19th century and intothe 20th, Americans tended to identify with their locale, state, or region ratherthan with their country. It may have been the size of the country, poortransportation, or perhaps immigrant influx which made a sense of personalmembership or stake in the country difficult to conceptualize. No doubt, too,harsh sectional feeling which had fostered civil war lingered long into the post-warera. For whatever reasons, citizens regarded their respective regions as havingunique problems which could necessarily have only regional solutions.

The earliest of these regional responses were the New England Association and,to a lesser extent, the Middle States Association. Clearly, W. H. Butts was verymuch aware of the strides New England headmasters had made in communicatingproblems to neighbouring higher institutions and sought similar benefits for hisregion. It is hardly coincidence, then, that the creation of the New EnglandAssociation and the North Central Association followed the same basic pattern. InNew England a firmly established organization of secondary school personnel, theMassachusetts Classical and High School Teachers Association, became increas-ingly frustrated by a web of conflicting college entrance requirements which made

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the designing of a preparatory curriculum all but impossible. The teachersproceeded directly to the most prestigious college they could find and sought outthe single most influential higher educator their region (and the country) hadproduced, Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, to see what could be done to rectify thesituation.22 Likewise Butts sought endorsement of his proposal by a pre-existingstate-wide organization of professional educators and was able to sit down withthe president of the single most influential man at the dominant institution in hisregion, Angell of Michigan. By contrast, impetus for the creation of the MiddleStates and Southern Associations came from college, not secondary, administra-tors. Only the New England and North Central Associations were built from thebottom up, so to speak, rather than from the top down. Recall too that the finalquestion posed in advance to invitees to the 1895 organizational meeting of theNorth Central was whether, assuming an association was formed, establishing'diplomatic relations' with the New England and Middle States Associations wasdesirable. The answer to this question was obviously affirmative. Moreover, at theNorth Central's first annual meeting President Angell's opening address madespecific reference to what had been very poor school-college articulation earlier inthe century. Finally, one of the first steps taken by the association was to nominatea delegate to attend meetings of the New England Association for the purpose ofproviding informal liaison with that organization.23

Another important influence on the creation and early policy directions of theNorth Central was the professional affiliation of its members. The men whocreated that body were an active lot, very much a part of the mainstream ofeducational thought at the turn of the century. Indeed, other, national organiza-tions seem to have been dominated by the very people who piloted the 'regional'.At any rate, North Central educators were cognizant not only of various agenciestrying to clear up congestion at the awkward intersection where colleges andschools met but of the successes and failures they were experiencing. Thisknowledge provided a helpful frame of reference as the North Central came toaddress the same difficult problem.

Of these agencies, the U.S. Bureau of Education should be mentioned. In tryingto gather data on the number and types of secondary schools and collegesoperating in the late 19th century, its Commissioner had first to form workingdefinitions of each. These definitions became a convenient point of departure whenthe Association, at its first annual meeting, considered the question raised byPresident Richard H. Jesse of the University of Missouri, 'What Constitutes aCollege and What a Secondary School?'24 Later, when the North Central tackledthe question of college accrediting, an earlier attempt by higher education specialistKendric C. Babcock to compile a qualitative list of American colleges provided theAssociation with an excellent example of how not to proceed.

Of far greater influence, not so much in the creation of the Association as in theevolution of its accrediting mission, was the Board of Regents of the State of NewYork. The Board, through strict policies regarding the incorporation andmaintenance level of higher institutions, constituted the only thorough andsuccessful effort by a state government to control the proliferation and quality ofits higher institutions until well into the 20th century. In so doing the Board of

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Regents engaged in a form of accreditation. Thus when other agencies, either byaccident or intent, assumed an accrediting function, the criteria developed by theBoard became a handy set of guidelines. The Carnegie Foundation, for instance,created in 1905 for the distribution of retirement funds to college professors,turned to the quantifiable standards of the Board of Regents to determine whichschools' teachers were eligible.25 Finally, the North Central Association, when itformally addressed the business of college accreditation, adopted the pre-existingstandards of the Board of Regents as its working model.26

The Association of American Universities would have been well advised to dothe same. When the A.A.U. was called upon to produce a list of'good' collegesupon which the University of Berlin could base graduate admissions policy, itelected instead to use the success or failure of a school's undergraduates in graduateprogrammes as the single measure of the school's worth.27

The national organization in which the men who formed the North Centralmost actively participated was the National Education Association. The N.E.A.,no doubt prodded by 'prime mover' Eliot, came to redefine the primary role ofAmerican high schools as being one of mass education, that is as distinct from anancillary role of supplying colleges with well prepared students. Through a nowfamous Committee of Ten, the N.E.A. attempted to systematize the high schoolcurriculum with emphasis on the continuous study of language, mathematics,natural science, and history. Such a restructuring in turn provided an intelligentapproach to the problem of college entrance requirements, a major concern of theNorth Central associates. At that 'regional's' first annual meeting, questions raisedconcerning college admissions and the importance of continuous secondary studyin English and history are couched in terms which make the influence of theN.E.A. unmistakable.28

From 1895 to 1901, the period during which the North Central was born and itspolicies shaped, the N.E.A.'s two main units, the Department of SecondaryEducation and the Department of Higher Education, were virtually run by NorthCentral educators. The Association furnished no less than six presidents of theformer department and four of the latter.29 Of this group, President Rogers ofNorthwestern and President Thwing of Western Reserve are notable. But theinfluence of men from the secondary sector may have been greater. A case in pointis A. F. Nightingale, Superintendent of High Schools in Chicago. An eloquentspokesman for mass education, Nightingale was in step with Eliot's thoughts onthe subject.30 He took over the chair of the N.E.A.'s Committee on CollegeEntrance Requirements in 1895, the very year in which the North Central wasformed. A glance at the Association's early Proceedings is ample proof of the extentto which Nightingale's experience with the N.E.A. helped shape the early policyof that regional body.31

Another conspicuous regional influence on the creation of the North Centralwas the unique approach to public education taken by the state of Michigan. Ofthe North Central states, Michigan was clearly the most progressive. The earlyfounding of the University of Michigan and that institution's acknowledgment ofthe state's responsibility for the higher education of women are illustrative of thispoint. Somehow, Michigan's education leaders seem to have anticipated earlier

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than those of other states the dangers of poor coordination between secondaryschools and colleges and took steps to avoid the problem. When the need for aregional association of schools and colleges to improve regional articulation wasidentified, the example set by the state of Michigan was a base from which toexpand inter-institutional cooperation throughout the North Central states.

Of course the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, on whose endorsement Butts wasable to build in gaining regional support for the association, is a case in point.Formed in 1886 at Ann Arbor, the Club provided a relaxed forum for exchangesbetween college and secondary school men on mutual problems and concerns. Noless distinguished a figure than John Dewey participated in the discussions andlauded the purpose of the club: 'We unite in forming the Michigan Schoolmasters'Club and aim to secure an opportunity to discuss matters that pertain to ourcommon work with particular reference to high school and collegiate training.'32

By 1894 the club had begun to attract observers from outside the state and hadsponsored a conference which was attended by men from New Jersey to Iowa.33

Thus, the Schoolmasters' Club was an ideal springboard for the kind of regionalassociation which Butts envisioned.

But a movement in Michigan toward the better articulation and systematizationof secondary and higher levels of public instruction can be traced back muchfurther. Dating from territorial days, the much-maligned Catholepistemiad orUniversity of Michigania reflected the concept of a state system, headed by auniversity, in which secondary and higher education were inseparably joined. Thisparticular scheme, although never successfully implemented, was scarcely forgot-ten. In 1836, when the Revd. John Pierce was appointed Michigan's Super-intendent for Public Instruction, he was directed to devise a system featuring astate university with localized branches offering secondary instruction geared topreparing students to enter a central institution to be located at Ann Arbor.34 Itwas with such a mission that the University of Michigan, on the drawing board inone form or another since 1817, opened its doors. True, a branch system fordovetailing secondary and collegiate instruction never really got off the ground;outposts at Pontiac, Monroe, Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Niles all fizzled by 1847.35

Yet the movement to coordinate curricula of high school and college remained.Written entrance examinations required by the University in its early days werelinked to specific secondary texts such as Kreb's Guide to the Writing of Latin, andKneightley's histories of ancient Greece and Rome.36 Quite clearly, education inMichigan developed from the top down. More important is the fact that inMichigan a system of education was actually developed; in other states, likeTopsy, they 'just grow'd'.

The planned hegemony of the University of Michigan in shaping a coordinatedstate education policy was enhanced by the wise selection of its early presidents.When Tappan took over in 1852, he had just returned from study in Germany,where he had become an advocate of the Prussian education model which includedclose coordination of course content at different levels of instruction and providedfor an orderly procession by students from one level to the next.37 Years later,when Angell took the reins at Michigan, he was quick to note Prussian influencesintroduced by Tappan and Haven and built upon their principles in the course of

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his own administration. Angell's support of elective courses, the acceleration ofstudent progress through the high school years, and the granting of college creditfor accelerated secondary coursework reflect his acceptance of the concept of theGerman 'gymnasium' and the university as the appropriate place for advancedgraduate study and research. Significantly, when Angell, after considerableagonizing, finally decided to move from Vermont to Ann Arbor, he was met bynone other than John Pierce, the very man who forty years before had developedthe whole Michigan system of public education featuring the role of theUniversity.38

The best known example of coordination between high schools and colleges inlate 19th-century Michigan is the so-called 'affiliation' or 'certification' system.Beginning in 1871, University of Michigan faculty visited upon request highschools within the state which felt that their programmes were broad enough inscope to prepare pupils for the programmes offered at Ann Arbor. If the inspectingfaculty concurred, schools were placed on a list and their graduates permitted toenter the university on the recommendation of their principal or superintendent.Unquestionably, other states within the region admired the school-collegecoordination built into what became known as the 'Michigan plan'. By the early1890s other North Central states had adopted similar schemes, while the pros andcons of the plan were discussed at length during early meetings of the NorthCentral Association.39

Yet we recall that when Butts approached Angell about the possibility offorming a regional association, he did not find the man enthusiastic. It may well bethat Angell felt that the problem of school-college articulation, at least within hisadopted state, was already well under control. Clearly, the state of Michigan,through a system which from its inception addressed the problem of integratingsecondary and higher education and through a university whose presidents andfaculty remained in contact with the high school scene, served as a model for theexpansion of the concepts of voluntary cooperation and school-college dialoguethroughout the entire region.

In conclusion, the creation of the North Central Association of Colleges andSecondary Schools cannot be viewed in historical isolation. It was very much theproduct of a broad, nationally-based movement toward consolidation andstandardization designed to wrest order from the chaos brought by decades ofunfettered growth. Further, the deliberations of other education organizations,many boasting North Central men among their membership, profoundlyinfluenced the creation of the Association. Finally, various regional conditions,chiefly the approach to education found in Michigan, helped to identify the needfor such a cooperative undertaking.

Even in those early days, some indications of the leadership role which theregional associations have come to play can be detected. It would appear,however, that these bodies were designed for a different, although related, purposeand came to assume an evaluative role in higher education only after various otherprivate and public agencies had tried to do the job and failed.

How the federal government, state governments, and other agencies may cometo share with the regional associations the governance of our higher education

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'system' remains to be seen. It would appear that we are still in a situation notunlike that which President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton described over seventyyears ago:+o

We are on the eve of a period of reconstruction. We are on the eve of aperiod when we are going to set up standards. We are on the eve of aperiod of synthesis, when, tired of this dispersion and standardlessanalysis, we are going to put things together into something like aconnected and thought-out scheme of endeavor.

As we strive toward such a synthesis, the continuing role of the regionalassociations, products of 19th-century conditions now confronted with the morepressing problems of the 20th, will surely be a critical one.

Neil McDowell Shawen,University of Virginia

1. William A. Kaplin, Respective Roles of Federal Government, State Governments, and PrivateAccrediting Agencies in the Governance of Post-secondary Education (Washington, D.C.: Council onPostsecondary Education, 1975), p. 1.

2. Ibid., p. iff.3. Samuel P. Capen, 'Seven Devils in Exchange for One', Coordination of Accrediting Activities,

American Council on Education Studies, Series 1, Vol. 3, 9 (Washington, D.C.: AmericanCouncil on Education, 1939).

4. William K. Selden, Accreditation: A Struggle Over Standards In Higher Education (New York,i960), p. 3.

5. Ibid., p. 30.6. Ibid., p. 26.7. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition (New York, 1958), p. 356.8. John Erie Grinnell, 'The Rise of the North Central Association', North Central Association

Quarterly, ix (4) (1935), p. 468.9. Selden, op. cit., p. 28.

10. Ibid.11. Ibid., pp. 26-7.12. Hugh Hawkins (ed.), The Emerging University and Industrial America (Lexington, 1970).13. Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), pp. 346ft".14. Calvin O. Davis, A History of the North Central Association (Ann Arbor, 1945), p. 5.15. Louis G. Geiger, Voluntary Accreditation: A History of the North Central Association, 1945—lgjo

(Menasha, Wise, 1970), p. viii.16. Grinnell, op. cit., pp. 474—5.17. Davis, op. cit., p. 4.18. Grinnell, op. cit., p. 475.19. Davis, op. cit., p. 5.20. North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Proceedings (1896), p. nff.21. Grinnell, op. cit., pp. 478-9.22. Claude M. Fuess, A Nutshell History of the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary

Schools (Cambridge, Mass., i960), pp. 5-6.23. Davis, op. cit., p. 178.24. Grinnell, op. cit., p. 480.25. George F. Zook and Melvin E. Haggerty, The Evaluation of Higher Institutions (Chicago, 1936),

p. 24.

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26. George N. Carman, 'Shall We Accredit Colleges?', N.C.A., Proceedings (1906), pp. 81-96.27. Zook and Haggerty, op. cit., pp. 33-8.28. N.C.A., Proceedings (1986), p. ioff.29. Grinnell, op. cit., p. 477.30. Ibid., p. 472.31. N.C.A., Proceedings (1896-99).32. Grinnell, p. 474.33- Ibid.34. Calvin O. Davis, Public Secondary Education (Chicago, 1917), p. 112.35. Ibid., p. 133.36. Ibid., p. 144.37. J. B. Angell, The Reminiscences of James Burrill Angell (New York, 1912), p. 226.38. Ibid.39. Davis, History, op. cit., p. 11.40. Selden, op. cit., p. 36.

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