Public higher education plays a vital role in the United States, enabling social and economic mobility for individuals and creating cultural, scientific, and technological progress for society. Given its important role and the support received from public funds, higher education is rightly held accountable through a variety of methods-accrediting bodies, state governing boards, and the federal government. Unfortunately, the vast quantity of information collected through these multiple, often fragmented sources can obscure what is crucial information.
Flaws in the accountability reporting structures were readily apparent when the U.S. Secretary of Education' s Commission on the Future of Higher Education wrote in its September 2006 final report the "lack of useful data and accountability hinders policymakers and the public from making informed decisions and prevents higher education from demonstrating its contribution to the public good" (U.S. Department of Education, 2006, p. 4). This conclusion was accompanied by the inference that the failure of higher education to voluntarily create an accountability reporting model could lead to the federal government' s imposing its own accountability standards and metrics on institutions.
With the rhetoric becoming increasingly critical, representatives from the public higher education community were convened by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National 39