I've said many times on this blog that academe's accountability problem is reaching a tipping point--and I've echoed many folks within academe and without (mostly without), who have noted that if academics won't police themselves, it's going to get done for them, and it's not going to be pretty.

The latest addition to this growing choir of voices is Idaho State provost Gary Olson, whose column in the current Chronicle of Higher Ed hits all the big points. He notes the need for transparency, fiscal responsibility, and for administrators and supervisors to hold faculty and staff to established professional standards. He mentions that higher education exists to serve the public good, and must clearly honor its public compact. He observes that even as legislators and federal commissions call loudly for academic accountability, they should not, ideally, be the ones implementing it--academics should be. And he argues that academics are already voluntarily doing just that.

Olson asserts that "In recent years, colleges and universities, independent of external pressure, have begun to institute sweeping measures to hold themselves and their faculty and staff members accountable in a number of areas," and his column is aimed ultimately at drawing a contrast between academia's recent, lawless past (where he personally "witnessed" how "'good old boy' ... supervisors and department heads often would ignore infractions of university rules, or privately direct the transgressor to halt the offending behavior"; where "a shocking degree of laxity in such matters" led "department heads [to] dismiss unethical, unprofessional, or occasionally illegal behavior because, 'after all, we're all colleagues,' or because, as a former chair once told me, 'rocking the boat would cause more trouble than it's worth'") and a new academic order oriented around documentation, clarity, and transparency.

Olson doesn't provide much evidence for the shift he celebrates--mostly he's arguing by assertion, and the reader is as free to discount his claim that academia is cleaning up its act as s/he is free to discount the prior assertion--backed only, ultimately, by anecdote--that there were serious problems to begin with. There's something for everyone in a non-analysis of this sort--but nothing very much, in the end, for anyone.

Be that as it may, Olson does get one thing very right indeed, and that is what a serious commitment to accountability can do for academia's internal operations and for its tarnished reputation. Noting that an "increased commitment to accountability" leads to "more deliberate, defensible, and professional decision-making" and that it underscores "the necessity of making data-driven rather than seat-of-the-pants decisions, much less ideologically driven ones," Olson explains an obvious point that tends to get lost in the polarizing, distorted culture-war crucible that is the usual destination for debates about academic accountability:

Becoming genuinely accountable means being able to demonstrate that decisions derive from specific facts, not from anecdote, impression, gut feeling, personal agenda, or ideology. It entails fostering a culture of evidence within the institution, which has led, in turn, to the increased importance of involving information-technology and institutional-research departments in key decisions.

Recently I was invited to participate on a panel of experts in information technology and institutional research about the importance of data-driven decision making in strategic planning. The consensus was that having sufficient access to the right data enables universities to make more sophisticated, fine-grained decisions and to demonstrate the rationales behind them.

Clearly, "accountability" in academe can refer to a vast array of attempts to become transparent and open in decision-making processes. Whether it is an attempt by curricular programs to illustrate that they are truly delivering what they promised, or an effort by academic departments (or entire institutions) to demonstrate that their students really are acquiring the skills and knowledge demanded by their disciplines, or measures taken by institutions to tighten their fiscal controls, the answer to "Why accountability?" is this: Because we have a responsibility as public stewards to answer for the trust we have been given.