In higher education, professional and regional accreditation agencies have traditionally been the standard setters for academic program quality. Accrediting agencies describe the areas of learning that institutions and programs should provide in order to be recognized as meeting minimal standards in the preparation of their graduates. Given the emphasis on increasing access to higher education, connecting the funding of public institutions to student retention and completion, and decreasing the time to degree by shortening degree programs and reducing the costs of attendance, both accreditors and institutions are under pressure. As a result, much of the public discourse and policy discussion has been focused on the number and percentage of students entering and completing college, with little, and definitely not equal, emphasis on the quality of learning. Accrediting bodies have been the one organizational entity that has required institutions to provide evidence of student learning outcomes. The challenge is that the measures of student learning readily available to capture and report at the institutional or programmatic level typically have been restricted to a very small set of outcomes and are not directly connected to the curriculum and co-curriculum. The efforts by accrediting bodies to require clearly articulated learning outcomes have changed the lexicon of higher education, and there are signs that they are changing the practices as well. Accreditors remain key driving forces for learning improvement and are now positioned to truly engage with faculty to create a mutually beneficial process that places the quality of the degree and the education it represents at the center of higher education operations. (Contains 2 figures and 10 notes.)