article_snippet: It does this through a little-understood process called accreditation.
article_snippet: To be eligible for those billions of research and financial aid dollars, colleges must be accredited.
article_snippet: Technically, accreditors are nonprofit organizations run by consortia of existing colleges.
article_snippet: With some authorizing language from Congress and a small, one-time start-up budget, the U.S. Department of Education could create a nonprofit, bipartisan organization with only two missions: approving courses and granting degrees.
article_snippet: Instead, National U. would hire teams of leading scholars to evaluate and approve courses.
article_snippet: Any higher education provider, public or private sector, could submit a course for approval.
article_snippet: Those that aren't already accredited would pay a fee to cover the cost of evaluation.
article_snippet: This won't be difficult, since existing colleges have already established a standard set of requirements: a certain number of approved lower- and upper-division courses, plus an approved sequence in an academic major, adding up to 60 or 120 credits.