About
What this site is about
Almost everything a student experiences is the output of an administrative structure nobody explains. This site takes four pieces of that structure apart and says where each came from.
The four parts are the credit hour, accreditation, the land-grant settlement and ranking methodology. Each is a device built to solve a particular problem at a particular moment, and each has outlasted the problem. The credit hour was defined around 1906 so that a private foundation could decide who counted as a college professor. Accreditation grew out of voluntary associations formed in the 1880s and 1890s, decades before the federal government had any interest in the outcome. The Morrill Act of 1862 paid for public colleges in land rather than money. Ranking formulas are a much later arrival, and the oldest of the American ones dates to 1983.
The material is administrative and historical: statutes, definitions, review cycles, arithmetic. Institutions, people and Acts are named because the documented record names them, and they are described rather than assessed. Where a published ranking appears, it appears as a methodology with its weights.
Where to start
The clearest single entry point is A private committee certifies the degree, which sets out the chain that runs from a campus to the Treasury. From there, The Carnegie unit explains the measure everything else is denominated in, and A weighted composite is an editorial position takes a league table apart.
Every page is listed on one archive page, and the four sections have their own landing pages.