Assuring the quality of higher education in America was once a straightforward, if tedious, proposition. Audit an institution's fiscal condition, check faculty credentials, make sure that the administration isn't riding roughshod over academic freedom, see whether or not the curriculum as expressed in the catalogue is reasonably coherent, browse through academic and student services, and that was about it. Accrediting commissions, and their member institutions and faculty, shared a rather complacent approach to academic quality, assuming that as long as the proper resources were in place and the people using them were faithful stewards, good learning (or at least acceptable learning) would follow.