"national accreditor that specializes in accrediting liberal arts colleges"

I happened to be reading what is basically an apologia page from St. Andrews Presbyterian College, which lost its accreditation from the Southern Association (for financial reasons) after being on probation for several years.

They sued the Southern Association and managed to find a sympathetic judge that forced Southern Association to continue accreditation until the suit can be heard (which, of course, will be years.)

But the interesting part is a paragraph in the middle of their apologia stating

While it continues to work toward a resolution of its dispute with SACS, St. Andrews is also exploring the possibility of obtaining additional accreditation from a national accrediting agency that specializes in the accreditation of liberal arts and sciences colleges and programs. If successful, this would result in the College being accredited by both the national organization and SACS.

(from http://www.sapc.edu/aboutsa/accreditation.php )

Now, I'm a little bit out of the loop on the very latest in DL, but I'm unaware of any DoEd accreditor that would fit into this category, unless they are possibly talking about DETC. But DETC, as far as I know, isn't known for accrediting B&M liberal arts and sciences colleges and it certainly isn't their specialty.

(That or Maxine Asher's World Association )

Any idea who they could be talking about?

 

A long shot, but could it be AGLS...or something like that?
Gavin

 

It's these guys:

http://www.aale.org/

From the site:

Academy now accepting new applications
At the December 2007 meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Institutional Quality and Integrity (the body that advises the US Secretary of Education about the recognition of accreditors) the recommendation was made and unanimously approved that the Academy be allowed to accept new applications for membership (for information on the former vote to limit AALE, please follow this link). On the strength of this reversal, AALE will begin accepting new applications in January of 2008.

And on the Applicant list:

St. Andrews Presbyterian College
Laurinburg, North Carolina

http://www.aale.org/highered/list.htm

 

Good find.

This is really interesting. At first glance, I didn't find them in the CHEA database, but then it turns out they are there. Which presumably means AALE accreditation qualifies one for financial aid... but I wonder how likely an AALE-accredited school's credits are to transfer to an RA school?

More interestingly, the dozen or so schools that currently have AALE accreditation (according to CHEA + AALE, which seem to have slightly different results) are an eclectic mix of foreign programs, US schools, community colleges, and even Excelsior.

My first thought was this was an accreditor focused on religious schools, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It does, however, seem to be mostly an "add-on" to existing regional accreditation ; I can't imagine Lorain County Community College, which is a huge regional CC in northern Ohio, near where I used to live, isn't regionally accredited, and Excelsior and a number of the others on the list clearly are.

As such, perhaps someone who knows more about this accreditor (or is willing to find out) can post some details.