A Statement from CHEA President Judith Eaton on NACIQI and Accreditation Even by talking about this without taking the 'party line' I will be blacklisted, which is fine, the education market has successfully colluded with government to fend off challenges from outside of its cartel like community. CHEA, according to its own president, means nothing and has little influence. It is not a peer independent body to 'The Department', it is something else (I'm not sure what now other than a voluntary tax on schools). I missed the market by 10 years to have really had an impact. Oh well. Feel free to now argue about which flavor of vanilla you want. DEL
I truly didn't think they'd do it. Accreditation is supposed to protect consumers. This will hurt them. But this isn't over. ACICS has a chance to recover.
Eaton's statement is disturbing in at least one element. She considers this action political. I don't think so. The Federal government has a fiduciary responsibility regarding Title IV funds. While I don't agree with threatening ACICS with this 'death penalty,' I accept the Department's role in ensuring the quality of accreditors granted the responsibility for recognizing schools who, in turn, disburse Federal financial aid. Where I totally agree with her is on the matter of self-regulation and governance. This has been a bedrock of higher education in the U.S. While it has permitted some schools to scoot on by--for a while--it has done a good job of creating and sustaining the greatest higher education system in the world. I'm not so sure the people at the Department of Education will be effective in taking on this responsibility for themselves. On the issue of abortion, I feel the medical community can regulate itself. On the issue of education, I feel the educators can regulate themselves. Both communities are subject to a great deal of governmental scrutiny and oversight, sure. But let the professionals handle this, not bureaucrats.
The attack on the For-Profit sector continues. Look, ACICS sucks, but a full-on takedown of it and all of its schools would be extreme. CHEA may not have any direct authority but the perception of their authority is well-established, so this is quite a blow. I really can see a situation down the road where non-profit schools stop accepting credits from For-Profits. There has been a lot of aligning to make it known which schools are non-profit and which are for-profit be it from wiki pages and repositories, to schools openly boasting their non-profit status to the gullible that believe this means the school provides a better education. ACICS will have a chance to defend themselves, but I don't feel particularly confident with ACICS at the helm of a situation with the potential for such a devastating domino effect.
Well, some schools already refuse to accept credits from UPhoenix. Credit transfer has never been an absolute. School reputation can play in. Accreditation can play in. But, ultimately, a school has a lot of latitude in determining whether credits will transfer. That's the reason why we see some schools accepting unaccredited credits or degrees from unaccredited schools for admission to graduate or professional studies. Go rack up a bunch of credits at your local community college and then try to transfer them to an elite school. Some might be accepted. Most will not. I've spoken with multiple people who transferred into Cornell, for example, and their associate degrees tend to only get them admitted to their sophomore year at CU. So that's two years worth of schooling at another college with only one year actually transferring and thus 5 years to earn a 4 year degree. Are there to be some schools that might be more aggressive toward their for-profit counterparts? I'm sure. But I cannot foresee a time when it will become a blanket rule. Universities have more on their plates than sticking it to for-profits. Also, a good many schools are not in competition with for-profits at all. No one is sitting down thinking "Should I go to Duke or Colorado Technical University?" And, frankly, the schools that are in direct competition with the for-profits have less wiggle room to be so picky. They aren't going to sell as many people on their degree completion programs if they try to be hardasses about where a person took English Comp. Those students aren't going to sit back and say "Well, my for-profit school ruined my life." They'll just move on and transfer those credits to a school with a friendlier transfer policy. Remember that there are a number of former for-profit schools becoming non-profits. There are likely to be more coming, in fact. I suspect GCU's fight isn't over. And I cannot imagine that Keiser University would be expected to take the same stance against for-profits that we might see at SNHU, for example. Colleges and Universities in the U.S. are pretty terrible at doing anything arm-in-arm. There are too many of them. The competition is too fierce and many of them are just struggling for survival. And while for-profit enrollment is down it certainly hasn't evaporated to nothing. They still enroll students. They still maintain corporate partnerships to offer programs to employees. Their graduates continue to go on to traditional B&M professional programs. As I've said before, if the best possible thing you can say about your school is that it is "non-profit" then that is pretty sad. If the absolute worst thing you can say about a school is that it is for-profit then it is probably a solid place of learning. All of this coupled with the fact that the majority of people don't actually understand the difference means that I don't expect any drastic shifts any time soon. This ACICS business is bad for ACICS schools. But ACICS also made its own bed with accrediting some of these shadier places and letting them get away with academic murder. I feel bad for the good schools that will undoubtedly be affected. But those schools should be able to pursue accreditation through DEAC, at a minimum. I also don't believe in "too big to fail." So if they fail then something new will likely fill the gap they leave in their wake.
Accreditors didn't resist becoming gatekeepers for federal financial aid, but they should have. “The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
And they had the way forward with that: CHEA. Still do. If the accreditors collectively walked away from Title IV, it would fall to individual schools (like VA benefits) to get approved. This assumes, of course, that the Federal government would go along--and away from the law that says the Fed will maintain a list of approved accreditors for the purpose of disbursing financial aid to accredited schools' students. I don't know that the Fed would want that job for thousands and thousands of tertiary institutions. (Again, like the VA.) I don't see the upside for accrediting agencies in the current setup.
I would think that ACCSC would be the next best option for these schools even though that accreditor is also horrible. I know some of them are not primarily distance learning, so they wouldn't fall under the scope of DEAC.
ACICS doesn't accredit purely distance schools, and DEAC doesn't accredit schools with required classroom attendance, so those two are mutually exclusive. Also, there are fundamental differences in what those two agencies expect in terms of structure.
It appears IAVA is all for the ACICS being crushed. IAVA Applauds Removal Of ACICS Accrediting Authority » Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Of America (IAVA)
They've also been fighting the 90/10 loophole at for-profits. IAVA Calls For Closure Of GI Bill 90/10 Loophole » Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Of America (IAVA)
I'll be the glass half full guy for once. ACICS kind of sucks as a gatekeeper for federal funds. Many ACICS schools suck as well. We've all talked about NA schools and how they compare against RA schools. At DEAC there are some pretty decent players like PF and UPeople. It isn't a money grab. They have articulation (or however you'd classify People's latest agreement) agreements with RA schools. The one time I ran into horribly outdated course material at PF I received, from their COO, a phone call to apologize, a full refund and a voucher for a discounted program along with the assurance that the course material was being updated and I just caught it at the wrong time. ACICS features schools like ITT Tech and CIBU (which we learned in another thread is apparently selling "honorary" doctorates). There are a lot of accreditors. There are a lot of schools. And the public is starting to wise up to a lot of the shenanigans that went on for many years. As with the latest wave of rules for for-profits (and others) the worst operators will fall by the wayside while the good ones will likely survive. This ACICS thing wasn't handled delicately. And it stinks of politics. But the end result is going to be that the good ACICS schools will probably find accreditation elsewhere while the ITT techs may have received their death blow. It's also serious enough that all of the accreditors will likely take notice and start getting their houses in order.
