Home1st Congress F William Summers Background Paper

Congress on Professional Education:

Focus on Education for the First Professional Degree

Until the founding of the American Library Association in 1876 there was no mechanism for the profession to monitor the quality of training or education for those entering the field. The monumental Public Libraries in the United States of America published in 1876 only quotes Dr. F. Fullmann, librarian of the University of Freiburg, on the topic of education for library science as it was developing in Germany. The report does not really address the need for training or education in the United States. (1)

The profession did take some notice when Dewey established the first library school in 1887, but it did not take a consistent view on the subject until the Williamson Report in 1923 was published with support of the Carnegie Foundation. Between 1887 and 1920 there were at least 6 different training modes for librarians. Then included:

1. On-the-job-training or learning through working in a library.
2. Apprenticeship through rotation in a variety of library departments.
3. Apprenticeship classes coupled with work assignments.
4. Training classes offered by larger public libraries.
5. Summer schools run by state library commissions.
6. Formal library schools. (2)

The period between the founding of Dewey's school and C.C. Williamson's famous report to the Carnegie Corporation, 1897-1923, is generally treated by library historians as one of chaos in which both the profession and ALA, as well as the Association of American Library Schools (now ALISE), established in 1915, struggled for clarity and coherence. Williamson's report was an indictment of the entire scene of professional preparation including the 15 schools he examined. Of the role of AALS, Williamson said, "If there is to be any effective supervision over the standards of library schools, it must come from outside of the Association." (3)

ALA’s response to the Williamson report was the creation of the Board of Education for Librarianship in 1924. The Board quickly moved to establish minimum standards for schools and to publish a list of schools which met those standards (1925), two minimum elements of an accreditation program which have continued until the present day. By 1932 there were 25 accredited schools and an additional 3 were conditionally accredited. In 1933, ALA issued a new set of Minimum Requirements which grouped programs in three categories: Type I Schools which required a BA for admission; Type II Schools which required three years of college; and Type III Schools which required only two years of college level work. By the time the 1933 standards were replaced in 1951, 37 schools were accredited.

The period from 1933 standards until the end of World War II was one of relatively little change which was no doubt due to the economic depression and World War II. One writer referred to the period 1940-1950 as "a decade of conferences and surveys." (4) A reading of a general history of the profession for the same period would probably produce a similar label. The major development of this period was the initiation of the MLS as a clear graduate degree to replace the older 5th year Bachelors degree which was given by many schools. The Master’s degree as the expected degree was incorporated in the 1951 Standards and was one of the major innovations of those standards. ALA adopted a single degree as the standard for professional practice, although programs leading to Bachelor's degrees and various types of certificates continued for some time and indeed, are still used.

The Standards for Accreditation 1951 were in use for over 20 years before being replaced by the Standards for Accreditation 1972. The 1972 standards made a number of departures from previous editions. Perhaps, the most important shift was the concept that programs were to be evaluated against their own and their institutions objectives with a minimal list of additional objectives which were stipulated by the standards. The additional objectives included such fundamental matters as:

1. Consistency with the general principles of librarianship and library education as these are identified by common agreement through the major documents and policy statements of relevant professional organizations.
2. Responsiveness to the needs of the constituency with the schools seeks to serve.
3. Sensitivity to emerging concepts of the role of the librarian in the library and the library in a multicultural society.
4. Awareness of the contributions of other disciplines to librarianship.(5)

The 1972 standards also, for the first time, identified discrimination based upon age, race, color, creed, religion, physical disability or sex in recruitment, admissions or financial aid as violations of the standards.

Another innovation in the 1972 standards was the expectation that the school would prepare a self-study document using forms developed by the Committee on Accreditation under which it would relate its programs to the Standards and to its own objectives. This self study document became the basis for the COA to make a decision to visit a school for initial accreditation and a guide to the site visitors in examining the School's program in all cases. The 1972 standards were in effect for an additional 20 years until the ALA Council approved new standards at the 1992 midwinter meeting. The 20 year period 1972-1992 encompassed many of the most significant changes which have effected the field of librarianship and higher education in this century. Among these changes were:

1. A major expansion in the cost of higher education and a significant slowing of the rate of increase of public investment in it.
2. Contraction in the demand for professional librarians.
3. Significant impact upon the field from computerization of library operations, as well as the use of computers for providing information services in organizations other than libraries.
4. Dramatic increase in the diversity of the population.
5. Programmatic reductions in higher education including the elimination of academic programs.

In response to these major societal shifts, the library profession and the Schools of Library and Information Studies* made a number of significant strategic and long term changes. Among these were:

1. Increased expectation in the profession that graduates would be competent in the emerging discipline of information technology.
2. An effort on the part of the schools, to broaden their curricular role in the University by adding a focus on information studies to their curriculum. This focus usually resulted in both major and minor curricula revision as well as frequently a change of name. Currently 46 of 47 U.S. schools and 7 of 7 Canadian schools use the word information in their name. Of these schools, 9 U.S. and 1 Canadian do not use the word library in some aspect of their name.
3. A dramatic increase in the costs of operating LIS schools as they came to require significant investments in technology, communications and software, as well as personnel with the skills to use and instruct in these matters.
4. The closing of 14 schools and the threatened closing of still others. The closing of schools and a difficult economy led to a significant decline in enrollment in the schools and in the number of graduates being produced each year. At the peak enrollment point, slightly more than 7,000 Master's degrees were awarded, at the lowest point in 1988-89, 3,797 were given. The total has increased in the 1990s and in 1995-96, 5,271 Master's were awarded.

Throughout, the operation of ALA's accreditation program concerns had been expressed about the fact that field was increasingly specialized yet ALA autonomously set standards and operated the accreditation program. This concern waxed and waned in such organizations as ALISE, SLA and MLA. It appeared to flourish with each revision of the standards. In the mid 1980s, two events occurred which focused on the question of whether some form of collaborative accreditation in the field was feasible. In 1984, under a grant from the H.W. Wilson Foundation, ALISE convened a conference which brought together representatives of 17 organizations to discuss whether accreditation could be broadened to provide for governance and operation of an accreditation program in the field through some collaborative and mutually supported mechanisms. The conference concluded that such a conference was both feasible and desirable. At the close of the conference, Robert M. Hayes, then Chair of COA, announced that ALA had received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to explore ways to implement such a structure. The final report of this project was issued in 1986 and endorsed the idea of cooperative accreditation and recommended that ALA support an inter-association advisory committee on accreditation. Discussions of the report made clear that while many associations were interested in participating in the governance and operation of accreditation, few, if any, were willing or able to assume a share of the costs. Given this fact, the idea of cooperative accreditation did not progress further.

In 1988, COA created a subcommittee to advise it on whether the 1972 Standards needed to be revised. The Subcommittee recommended a revision and in 1989 appointed a subcommittee to begin the work. This subcommittee invited participation from many interested organizations. The subcommittee produced successive drafts of the standards and forwarded them to all interested groups for comments. It also held public hearings on the drafts. COA's timetable called for final presentation to the ALA Council in June 1992. However, when they were presented at the Midwinter Conference in 1992, there was such agreement that the Council adopted them at that time to be effective January 1, 1993.

During the work on the revision of the standards it became clear that there was general dissatisfaction with the processes which the COA used to consider schools for accreditation. The schools insisted that the process had become too intrusive, focused on matters of detail rather than significance and was far too time consuming, and costly. COA agreed to re-examine the process and during the period 1993-1995 issued new documents detailing a restructured process under which it is now operating as it moves to accredit schools under the 1992 standards.

In most countries of the world the processes of approving educational institutions to offer various kinds of programs and setting the standards under which these programs operate is a state function executed by something like a ministry of education. In the U.S., because national control of education was not an acceptable alternative, there is no entity with such power. In its place the U.S. evolved a national system of accreditation which exists at two levels. Institutions are accredited by six different regional accrediting bodies. Within these institutions various academic specializations are accredited by "specialized" accrediting agencies operating at the national level. One of the frequently unrecognized keystones of this system is the fact that specialized accrediting bodies do not accredit programs which are not located in regionally accredited institutions.

In the U.S. system accreditation is a non-governmental voluntary activity. Governance of this system has always been a tri-partite cooperative venture involving the institutions, the accrediting agencies and the public interest. Various structures have been utilized over the years to govern the accreditation enterprise and the structure is currently under revision.

In the dramatic growth in the educational enterprise which followed World War II it became very critical for educational institutions to know which "specialized" accrediting bodies were responsible, which had recognition and standing in their own fields, and to limit to the extent possible the number of accrediting bodies with which they had to deal. A national system of recognition of accrediting bodies, as it were, accrediting the accrediting agencies was developed. ALA has been a constituent part of this process from its beginnings. For many years the organization was known as the Council on Post Secondary Education (COPA). In the 1992 re-authorization of the Higher Education Act, the accreditation processes were highly criticized for tolerating the high default rates on student loans. Part of the blame was assigned to COPA and institutions lost confidence in accreditation to the degree that the organization was dissolved in 1993. It was recognized that an accrediting agency recognition process needed to continue and a new group, the Commission on Recognition of Post Secondary Accreditation (CORPA), was created to continue on an interim basis. In 1995, a group of university presidents and trustees developed a proposal for a Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). In the spring of 1996, CHEA was ratified in a vote in which, with 54 percent of all degree granting institutions voting, 94 percent favored the establishment of CHEA. (6)

CHEA has continued the recognition of agencies recognized by CORPA and it is under this rubric that ALA now functions as a recognized accrediting agency. Currently, CHEA has prepared and distributed a draft set of guidelines under which accrediting agencies will be recognized. Comments on the guidelines will be received until April 30. Final approval by the CHEA Board is scheduled for May or July 1998 with implementation January 1999. (7)

In addition to the cooperative system of governing accreditation outlined above, the federal government also recognized in the postwar expansion that institutions were claiming federal grants based upon their accreditation and that it needed to know which were reputable accrediting agencies and which were not. Congress authorized the then Commissioner of Education (subsequently Secretary of Education) to implement a process under which the Department would recognize accrediting agencies. For many years ALA carried additional recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. In the latest effort to reduce government activity under the Clinton administration, the Secretary decided to eliminate recognition where the accrediting body's work did not contribute directly to the qualification for federal funds. As a result, ALA and many other specialized accrediting agencies were dropped from the recognition program.

Periodically it has been suggested that ALA should undertake some other, or some additional form of recognition of professional capability than graduation from an ALA accredited program. The three processes most often mentioned are accreditation, certification, and licensing.

Accreditation is the process of recognizing an educational institution as meeting established levels of quality (standards) in the conduct of its program. In accreditation the recognition goes to the institution, no to the individual completing the program. In many instances it has become common practice, although highly inaccurate, for the recognition to be treated as though it were a statement about the individual. Thus, "graduation from an ALA accredited program" is a frequently used employment criterion or minimum qualification. The presumption in this instance is that all individuals meeting this standard have achieved some common minimum level, when actually it is the program they completed which has achieved at least a minimum level.

It should be noted that ALA does not now, nor apparently has it ever, undertaken activities to promote graduation from an accredited program as an employment standard. ALA has attempted to assist libraries in defending the educational credential when its use has been challenged. Generally these efforts have been successful.

Certification is a process of recognition which attaches to and is related to the individual. Certification is frequently used in the private sector as in "Certified Life Underwriter" or "Certified Financial Planner." In these instances the individual receives the certification as a result of completion of some program of study or passage of an examination or both.

In LIS, the most frequently occurring use of certification is in the case of school media services in which certification is issued by the state. State certification requirements vary across the nation but commonly include completion of an educational program approved by the state, or completion of a specific program of courses to meet established standards, e.g. "6 hours in selection and evaluation of materials, 3 hours of information services" etc. In an effort to strengthen their certification programs many states have also added achievement of specific scores on certain tests which are either national standardized tests or state specific tests.

In recent years certification has also been adopted by the Medical Library Association (MLA) for its certification of medical librarians. Initially this certification was based upon successful completion of an exam which the MLA prepared and administered. Recently however, the examination approach has been abandoned and replaced by an "Academy model" of certification which is based upon professional review of a portfolio identifying educational and professional experiences which qualify the individual.

Over the years some states have developed "certification" programs for public librarians. In most instances these programs have involved only verification of educational attainment and any experience requirement for level of certification sought. For many years, the State of New York required certification examinations but these have been replaced by "unassembled examinations" which involve review of educational and experiential requirements.

It has been proposed from time to time that ALA become involved in certification programs in addition to or in place of accreditation activities. An initial problem is the fact that certification of individuals either for initial employment or for more advanced status is inconsistent with ALA’s status as a Sect. 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization. (8) In order to engage in certification activities ALA would need to create a separate Sect. 501(c)(6) tax exempt organization which it might control and operate (9). It should be noted that there are many professional organizations which successfully operate programs of certification at various levels. The certification of lawyers and public accountants as a result of examinations is well known and established in society.

Certification based upon examination requires the establishment and maintenance of a valid certifying examination. The process of validation is complicated and costly and it may be the case that development of such an examination for LIS would be prohibitive in cost given the relatively small number of individuals who might be involved.

Licensing relates to a process under which a person is permitted to engage in professional practice. Licensing activities are carried out by the states, frequently through licensing boards created to license in the various fields. Licensing is not normally done by professional bodies at the national level.

In most respects the ALA program of accreditation operates very much like any other specialized accrediting agency. There are however, some distinct differences. One very significant difference is that unlike a great many other accrediting bodies, ALA is a professional organization involved in a great many other objectives and activities than accreditation. When this occurs the national recognition bodies expect that the organization will provide adequate safeguards to insure that its other concerns do not intrude into the accreditation process. To accomplish this purpose the "Criteria for Secretarial Recognition" promulgated by the Department of Education provide that the agency must include both educators and practitioners in its accreditation; that it will provide for representation of the public on all decision-making bodies; and that it has "clear and effective controls against conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest by the agency’s board members, commissioners, evaluation team members, consultants, administrative staff, and other agency representatives." (10)

In a similar vein the proposed CHEA standards provide that the accrediting body must "demonstrate independence from any parent agency or sponsoring agency for making judgements relative to accreditation status."(11)

ALA has traditionally met these requirements by contending that the breadth of Council's delegation of power to the COA, "To be responsible for the execution of the accrediting program of ALA", coupled with Council's reservation to itself of the power to approve the accreditation standards provided COA sufficient autonomy to insure that ALA's other professional interests could not control the accreditation process. (12)

A criticism leveled at the COA over the years is that it has been dominated by educators. A careful review of the appointments to the Committee made by various ALA Presidents over a number of years reveals that ALA has consistently attempted to balance many factors in filling vacancies on the Committee and that neither practitioners nor educators have dominated. Among the interests consistently represented on the Committee are the public, two members are always non-librarian members of the public, and the Canadian Library Association. Given the propensity of people to change professional orientations, the current chair, for example, is a former educator who became an urban library director, and to represent several interests, e.g. minority and professional, the makeup of Committee overtime has probably been about as diverse as a group of 12 could be.

In carrying out its charge the Committee and its staff are responsible for a wide variety of activities. There is no purpose in repeating the COA procedures documents here, but a brief review and summary may be useful. The accreditation functions are as follows:

1. Review of the Process and the validity of the Standards is an on-going activity involving both the Committee and the staff.
2. Review of annual reports from the schools on their progress, with special attention to the implementation of COA recommendations. These reports are both statistical and narrative. Through cooperation with ALISE, the COA receives the statistical reports of the schools to ALISE, thus relieving the institutions of onerous duplicate reporting.
3. Providing consultative assistance to schools seeking initial accreditation, or those with less than full accreditation.
4. Scheduling and staffing the annual sequence of External Review Panels which may involve 7-10 panels per year.
5. Providing advice and assistance to the schools and the External Review Panels in the development of the Program Presentation document, preparation for and conduct of the on-site visit and post-visit activities including preparation of the External Review report, the school's response to the report, and the presentation of the report to the COA.
6. Representing and interpreting the accreditation process at the national level through liaison with such bodies as CHEA, ALISE, and other professional societies with an interest in accreditation.
7. Preparation of articles and interpretive materials relating to the operation of the program as well as its interpretation to a variety of audiences.
8. Monitoring and interpreting to ALA trends and developments in education and accreditation at the national, regional and state levels which have significance for the accreditation program.

All of the above, which is by no means an encyclopedic list may serve to explain the fact that in ALA Folklore, an appointment to the COA is tantamount to becoming fundamentally professionally invisible to one's colleagues for the four-year term.

Because accreditation is a cooperative voluntary process the COA is required to have policies and procedures to protect the information it receives from and about the school. Over the years, this requirement has caused the COA to be regarded as overly closed and secretive in contrast to the norms and values ALA espouses. In recent years, COA has done a great deal to make the process as open and publicly visible as possible. At present the Program Presentation documents are the property of school and may be released as it decides. There has been a healthy trend on the part of the Schools, which COA has encouraged, to make these documents widely available, including placing them on the World Wide Web. The Report of the External Review Panel is owned jointly by the School and the COA and the school is encouraged to release the full report. If the School releases only excerpts, the COA reserves the right to release the full report. The COA accreditation decision is publicly released. Correspondence between the school and COA is co-owned and is kept confidential. (13)

A. Specializations

Throughout the history of ALA's program of accreditation, the issue of specializations has been a persistent theme and issue. Specialized groups both within and outside ALA have from time to time felt that their particular concerns were not being given adequate attention in the Schools and have called upon COA to bring the accredited programs to task. Bearing in mind that accreditation is a cooperative venture between the Schools and the accrediting body there is some practical limit as to how far COA can go in addressing the problem. It is probably not feasible for COA to require that a school offer a particular specialization unless it can be shown that in failing to do so the school is failing to address the needs of the constituency which it seeks to serve.

COA is on stronger ground when it examines the quality of a specialization which the School has declared itself to offer. In this regard, the COA has called upon the various specializations to prepare statements of what constitutes an appropriate specialization as guidance to itself and to the schools. Many groups have done so and others have them either in preparation or under revision.

One response which COA makes to specialization is an effort to include on External Review Panels individuals who are competent to make assessments of the quality of the major specializations which the school identifies. To this end it has significantly increased its pool of qualified evaluators it draws upon to form panels.

There will probably always be a certain tension between the schools and the various specializations as to what constitutes a proper preparation. From the perspective of the school the more content required for each specialization, the more difficult it becomes to offer the courses with a faculty of limited size and the fewer specializations it can offer. From the perspective of practitioners of the specialization it is necessary that graduates be prepared to serve in the fullest possible way. There is also the fact that the schools are aware that a healthy proportion of the students will ultimately not take jobs in the specializations for which they prepared and hence would have been better served by a less specific preparation.

B. Professional vs. Pedagogical

Throughout the history of education for librarianship there has been a tension between the needs of the profession for practitioners and the expectations of the academy that its schools will be concerned with the discovery and transmission of new knowledge. This difference is often labeled as "theory vs. practice" distinction which gives the erroneous impression that there could be one without the other. The conflict probably has its roots in the apprenticeship era when the path to practice was to work under the guidance of a skilled practitioner. It is also the case that some aspects of the field retain and cherish elements of art rather than science.

As the schools seek to become more theoretical in their teaching and research they gain credibility within the academy but may lose it within some segments of the profession. This balancing act has gone on for some time, although it should be noted that of the library schools which have been closed none were accused by their institution of failing to represent the viewpoints of the profession. Several were cited for failure to meet the expectations of the academic enterprise. As the schools attempt to move forward in enlarging their mission to include the preparation of people to serve society in a wide variety of information services roles, some well outside the traditional definitions of libraries, this tension will grow. On the other hand, evidence exists to indicate that a role of solely preparing, what Paul Wasserman once referred to as, "replacement troops" for the existing library structure would inevitably lead to fewer, smaller schools in institutions of less than the highest rank. The 1992 standards define the field in very broad terms and voices are being raised in opposition to that breadth. It should be considered that this is a very old tension that has waxed and waned several times in the history of library education and can be expected to continue to do so. Schools will inevitably attempt to respond by trying to do some of both. It is clearly observable that librarianship is a broader and broader discipline. Since LIS education has often been accused of trailing the field for most of its history, perhaps the dance of professional evolution would be enhanced by letting it lead for a time.

* For convenience and consistency, the schools will be referred to from here out as Schools of Library and Information Studies, since this is the term used in the Standards for Accreditation. The abbreviation LIS schools will also be used.

Notes:
1. U.S. Department of the Interior. Bureau of Education. Public Libraries in the United States of America: their History Condition and Management, Special Report, Part 1. Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1876.

2. Carroll, C. Edward, "History of Library Education," In: Mary B. Cassata and Herman B. Totten. The Administrative Aspects of Education for Librarianship: A Symposium Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, p. 7-8.

3. Cassata and Totten, op. Cit. p. 26.

4. Ibid., p. 13.

5. American Library Association. Standards for Accreditation, 1972. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 1972, p. 3.

6. Glidden, Robert, "Accreditation at a Crossroads," Educational Record, (Fall 1996). p. 22-24.

7. Council for Higher Education Accreditation. "Dear Colleague" letter dated Feb. 20, 1998.

8. Letter from Paula Cozzi Goedert, Attorney, Jenner and Block to Mary Ghikas. Associate Executive Director, Part 602 Secretary’s Procedures Subpart C-Criteria for Secretarial Recognition American Library Association, dated May 1, 1997, p. 3.

9. Ibid. p. 3.

10. U.S. Department of Education, p. 12.

11. Council for Higher Education Accreditation. op. cit

12. American Library Association, ALA Handbook of Organization1997-98, Chicago, American Library Association, p. 12.

13. American Library Association. Committee on Accreditation, Accreditation under the 1992 Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies: An Overview, Chicago, American Library Association, 1994, p. 20.