U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled this month that her department will likely revise an Obama administration policy on how colleges and universities handle campus sexual assaults.

DeVos, who observed that "a system without due process ultimately serves no one in the end" is right to address this topic. And she has her work cut out for her.

The rhetoric that dominates the debate often obscures the notion of ensuring fundamental fairness -- to both sides -- when adjudicating a sexual assault accusation.

The Obama administration's Title IX policy, established in 2011, came on the heels of reports that colleges and universities were giving sexual assault accusations insufficient attention -- or ignoring them.

The policy requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funding to convene investigative proceedings to adjudicate allegations of sexual violence and sexual harassment made by students.

It is vitally important to provide justice to sexual assault survivors, but the Obama administration's policy has created extraordinary risks for accused students who are innocent.

"We launched a movement of women and men to fight campus sexual assault" —@POTUS: https://t.co/alnchk8D6D#ItsOnUspic.twitter.com/YAuBasv71W — White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) June 14, 2016

Under the policy, accusations must be evaluated not under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" burden of proof used in criminal courts, but under the much lower "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which requires a finding against the accused if the probability of guilt is more than 50%.

This means even if the tribunal reviewing the evidence concludes there is a 49% chance that accused students -- overwhelmingly male -- did not engage in the alleged conduct, the accused will nonetheless be found responsible.

The policy contains other fundamental flaws of due process.

It recommends, but does not require, an appeals process.

It does not require that appeals be heard by an independent entity.

"Campus sexual assault is no longer a thing that we as a nation can say, 'It's not our problem.'" —President Obama #ItsOnUs — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 19, 2014

As a result, many campuses manage appeals through the same office that oversaw the initial proceeding, creating a bias in favor of affirming the original finding.

This approach also fails to guarantee the accused access to a hearing, a right to review evidence or the right to ask questions through a lawyer.

This can lead to the kinds of sham proceedings that have attracted national headlines.

Supporters of the current framework are already devising plans at the state level to compensate for a potential federal rollback.

In California, state legislators have drafted legislation that would, in effect, turn the 2011 federal policy into a state law.

This would be a mistake. If accusations of sexual violence are indeed to continue to be adjudicated by on-campus tribunals -- the criminal courts are in many ways much better equipped than campus administrators to manage trials regarding acts that constitute violent felonies -- then the 2011 policy requires a major overhaul.

Probability models show that if the "preponderance of the evidence" standard were used in the regular criminal justice system, innocent defendants would face a chance of false conviction as high as 33%.

There is no reason to believe the error rate is less in an on-campus proceeding. It is likely to be higher.

A higher burden of proof is necessary, and so are more robust procedures to ensure that proceedings are fair, balanced and transparent.

Due process must be the core component of any campus adjudicatory system.

Otherwise, on-campus sexual assault proceedings will continue to be rightly challenged as lacking in fairness and legitimacy.

Bazelon is an associate professor and director of the criminal justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law. Villasenor is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.