Revitalizing Academic Assessment

Navigating the Tensions Between Accreditation Compliance and Faculty-Driven Learning Improvement

Abstract

Academic assessment in higher education sits inside a contradiction it can no longer finesse. Institutions defend assessment as a mechanism for improving student learning, yet faculty often experience it as compliance labor performed for accreditation. This article argues that the problem is not assessment itself, nor accreditation itself, but the institutional conversion of accreditation expectations into ritualized evidence production. Building from prior work on the distinction between proving and improving learning, rational choice pressures on faculty, and differentiated faculty engagement in assessment, this article reframes assessment as faculty-driven inquiry rather than administrative extraction. The article also advances an Assessment Translation Framework, a practical model for converting external accountability demands into learning questions, embedded evidence, instructional action, and accreditation narratives that preserve faculty judgment. The argument is intentionally direct: higher education does not need more assessment theater. It needs fewer performative loops and more consequential learning conversations.