Sparks are expected to fly when the affiliated accreditors of the American Bar Association (ABA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) come up for review by the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). And these sparks should ignite a fire that torches the monopoly power these two associations currently wield over their respective professions.

For our justice system, the ABA exercises a monopoly over the design and delivery of legal education (through accreditation) and a stranglehold on lawyers’ ability to practice law (through state licensure). Similarly, if you wish to become a psychologist, in most states you will need to attend an APA-accredited program. In both cases, the association-affiliated accreditor is the sole gatekeeper to federal aid programs and state licensure.

On the accreditation side, why is this a problem? Well, on the surface, it seems very reasonable that the standards for highly technical professions like law and medicine should be set by experts in those fields, and these professional associations represent the largest concentrations of such experts.

If the ABA and APA limited themselves to enforcing standards associated with........

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