ACCS Loses Accreditation with TRACS

I received an email from TRACS today. ACCS was not reaffirmed.

Pug

 

This is the information that I received as well. We will have to wait to see what is the next step for ACCS. I know they were considering RA but frankly I wonder how an RA accreditor looks at this sort of thing. Before they approach anyone (even just DETC) they need to cure the systems problems they have.

Sighh....

Pray for the students and especially for the staff that have invested themselves in the school and earn their living from it.

North

 

Yup. This is really sad for the students and faculty. Could DETC accredit them anyway? I thought that a requirement of the DETC was that the entire school was DL.

Pug

 

I have a few questions for some of you with a little "insider" information on ACCS.
Does it seem like they have been trying hard to resolve their problems? If so, were the difficulties just too much to overcome in the time allowed? Do you think they will continue to try and work at these issues (I know it is hard to predict what they may do, but just your impression will do)? Thanks.

 

Is this ACCS?

 

yup

 

My guess? No RA accreditor will touch them now. The perception, right or wrong, is that they lost a "lesser" accreditation. This makes RA extremely unlikely for a number of reasons.

Sadly, I think they're done being accredited by anyone recognized by CHEA. However, I would encourage them to prove me wrong. Trust me, it won't be the first time.


Tom Nixon

 

So that's that. Finally. Sad news, but neither unexpected nor undeserved.

Alan: My guess is that they tried to make some cosmetic changes and then good-ole-boy their way out of this mess. If the number of students they have is reported accurately, they just don't have the staff to run a school appropriately. (This is separate from any questions of academic rigor, faculty credentials, etc.) I wish them well, but I doubt they have the toughness to make the needed systemic changes. If they do, nobody will be happier than I.

 

Hey Unk,

I agree and disagree with you. I agree that I am afraid the revocation was the fault of ACCS not TRACS. Certainly, TRACS needs to maintain their standards and look like they are willing to follow through.

The part I disagree with...based on conversations I have had with ACCS folks I get the impression that they really did try (Beville sounded exhausted) *BUT* the systemic problems were so great and the organizational disorientation bad enough that they could not get the administrative stuff together. This last time I get the impression they had no idea how they did and were hopeful everything was okay. They did not know the outcome at the end of the meeting.

Like BLD I sensed the problems in the interactions I had with folks. There were not enough competent folks to manage the school which had become a multimillion dollar budgeted operation. I think the folks there were nothing short of overwhelmed. One of the administrative assistants was as sweet as can be but frankly knew nothing and was of little help. This is very frustrating when you fail and fail again to get the main dude you need to talk to. There were days I wanted to scream in frustration. My frustrations had nothing to do with academics and everything to do with administrative problems.

Many of the people I interacted with were truly committed, Christians who saw ACCS as a vocations. I am very sad for them and for current students who have not graduated and may have problems.

I agree with Tom. I think it will be a hard row for ACCS to hoe getting another accreditor to accredit them after failing to be reaccredited. I suppose the best bet would be to go down to DETC accrediation by dropping doctoral programs. If they can get it together they should be part way to meeting DETC criteria. If necessary drop their campus program all together.

North

 

<<I suppose the best bet would be to go down to DETC accrediation by dropping doctoral programs. >>

I am of the understanding that the DETC will only accredit schools that operate entirely via DL. Yes, no?

Also, I have a question with regard to the loss of accreditation. When is the loss of accreditation officially take place? Immediately or at the end of this academic year? In other words, will the students that graduate next month do so with accredited degrees? Or, is a student that has been attending ACCS for nearly years going to graduate in a month with an unaccredited degree?

Pug

 

ACCS could always drop their campus program and doctoral programs to meet DETC. I have a feeling that DETC is a little less stringent than TRACS so ACCS might meet that.

As to your other question. My understanding (I could be wrong) is that the loss of accreditation becomes effective immediately. Basically if you graduate before then you have an accredited degree ......later and you do not. You could always make the argument that all of your credits were earned while the school was accredited. It is indeed sad that you may have had students waiting around for this May's graduation having completed all of the requirements and now they are in a less than happy situation.

Have you completed all of your requirements??

North

 

You are quite right, North. By good-ole-boy-ing I did not mean to imply that I thought they weren't trying. Mitch Beville's office always looked like a cyclone had hit it--and him. Walton (DMin ORU) and Ledbetter (MTS Harvard) seemed pretty sharp. Lineberry was OK. Young wore positively levantine amounts of perfume that literally caused me a seizure and made me very ill. But nothing, nothing, nothing ever got done right. I think they were hard workers who did not and do not have a clue. None of the support staff said the same thing twice, spelled my name right (or could copy it correctly when spelled distinctly and ever so s-l-o-w-l-y), or processed any of my registrations correctly. But they were nice as pie. Walton kept switching assignments on me, and the correlation of textbooks to in-class lectures was nonexistent. They got none of the texts in for the mini-session I attended, demanded we have them instanter, and suggested maybe we try Mardel's in OKC or drive over to Tulsa or order from Amazon. The mini-sessions did not accelerate completion of courses by intensive work (despite promises); they just added a week of droll lectures, much additional expense, and truly hellacious driving to get there after church one Sunday and get back by the following Sunday. E-mail communication was incoherent. As you say, getting to talk to the person you needed to talk to was almost impossible--because nobody ever quite was sure who that was. But were they lazy? Did they not work hard? No to both. They were industrious. They just didn't know how to accomplish anything.

Now I'll lapse into heresy. My guess is that they should cut way back on DL and concentrate on strengthening their support in the OKC area. ACCS has far too many students--they can't cope with the numbers and the administrative demands. They should cut back on acceptance of new students until they figure out how to administer the ones they've got. They should quit blaming Shealy for everything wrong in the universe (drop ye olde dead donkey, chums) and see if they can get somebody dynamic and presentable to be their PR official, whatever title they attach to that job (president, dean, what have you). Spencer Ledbetter is ebullient and LaDonna Osborn is a hoot. Either would be a better glamor puss (as that great theologian S.J. Perelman put it) than Fred Hambrick, an OK fellow, but not inspirational. Then they need to ditch the honeybunch sweetiepie shuug platoon (I rarely feel more "Northern" than when that routine starts up--just a quirk of mahn) of dozens of part-time and part-conscious office help, and get a couple of authority-endowed first-class secretaries/office managers to kick some ass, endear themselves to the genial mob, and maybe, jes' maybe, get the whole operation functioning correctly. Then they could maybe update their clunky homemade website maybe more than once per dispensation.

Again, I did not mean to impugn their hard work or the strenuous character of their efforts to fix things. Despite its very weird beginnings, my impression is that the current folks at ACCS are honorable. Twits, but honorable, and not quite housebroken.

 

Good post Uncle and a lot a relevent points.

As I implied above with my comment about the sweet older assistant...you are correct. Some of the folks who work there are nice, sweet, but come across as completely unhelpful other than at trying to take a message. There is a need to clean house of folks who are not up to the task and replace them with a crack team. When somone tries for days to get a hold of a person and gets switched to his assistant who is as sweet as can be but comes across as knowing nothing except how to take a message and seems confused about terminology then you have a problem.

I have called and gotten folks who are not secretaries but cannot make decisions or determinations. If you are the assistant such and such then you better know your field. Having a few thousand students trying to contact one guy who wears too many hats is courting distaster. On top of that having sweet but incompetent people means dropping a lot of balls because people cannot be truly supportive of the operation.

All of this speaks to the huge sytems failures that all of yours, mine, and BLD's experiences point out. There were times I could have screamed with the lost files, not knowing what I was enrolled in, courses that did not arrive, administrative paperwork that never got done, unreturned phone calls, etc.

What I wonder about now is what will happen. They have a budget that is in the millions (2 or 3??). How do you run when your student numbers drop off? What is their next move? Will they implode?

I think there next best bet at this point is to move down to DETC accreditation, drop their campus program, and their doctoral programs. In this way they could salvage what they ahve and should be able to meet DETC *if* DETC is not scared off by the prosect of accrediting a school that lost accreditation.

Dr. Beville, Beth Walker and others there are good, smart folks who are overwhelmed. Too many students and too few resources.

Appreciate your humorous insights unk.

North

 

One thing that occurred to me...could ACCS reapply for TRACS accreditation as a candidate or is there a waiting period?

Maybe John Bear knows if this has ever been done. Has any school lost acceditation and then gone through the whole process again with the same accreditor?

North