Bar associations are very different from college accreditation boards. Bar associations are a guild whose main goal is to restrict supply by making it hard to become a lawyer. (Even still, the US has far more lawyers than it needs.) They exist pretty explicitly to keep legal salaries high.
Accreditation for colleges is much more, well, collegial. There's no big motivation to restrict supply. It's hard to think of any really good educational institutions that can't seem to get accredited for political reasons. The list of over 1000 accredited colleges in CA starts off:
* A-Technical College (LA)
* ABC Adult School (Cerritos)
* Abram Friedman Occupational Center (LA)
* Absolute Safety Training Paramedic Program (Oroville)
* Academy Education Services (Oxnard)
so it's not just the Stanfords that can manage accreditation.
Accreditation for less established and less lucrative professions is much easier. The grip tightens over time, within a profession.
It's hard to think of any really good educational institutions that can't seem to get accredited for political reasons.
Three years of on the job training is better education than three years of schooling in practically every field. Plus you get paid rather than have to pay. Yet on the job training does not count as education that allows you to legally be a lawyer, doctor, teacher, parole officer, military officer, etc.
The problem with government sanctioned accreditation is not that the specific decisions about which schools meet the requirements get politicized. The problem is that accreditation allows the intuitions who reap the tuition money to define what education itself means.
Three years of on the job training is better education than three years of schooling in practically every field.
In CS, this is mostly false. You learn very different things in school and in industry. The former is useful in the latter, but usually not vice versa.
Accreditation for colleges is much more, well, collegial. There's no big motivation to restrict supply. It's hard to think of any really good educational institutions that can't seem to get accredited for political reasons. The list of over 1000 accredited colleges in CA starts off:
* A-Technical College (LA)
* ABC Adult School (Cerritos)
* Abram Friedman Occupational Center (LA)
* Absolute Safety Training Paramedic Program (Oroville)
* Academy Education Services (Oxnard)
so it's not just the Stanfords that can manage accreditation.