WLC Sues DEAC for $17.4M, Identifies Corruption and Incompetence in Federal Complaint

Perhaps you should spend more time in federal court. It absolutely matters what the judge thinks. Otherwise the "Cannibal Cop" would be in prison and the woman burned by McDonald's coffee would have walked away with pennies.

Quite possibly. While you detected elitism I picked up on a trend of potentially unqualified (according to the one sided petition we read) individuals arbitrarily and haphazardly applying accreditation standards.

This isn't a "I think Bruce is wrong" sort of thing, mind you. Everyone is going to read this and come away with a different feeling. For me, had the petition read "Joe Smith, a police officer with no college degree" I would have probably thought "Well, Officer Smith may have more experience and street smarts than any PhD and may be an invaluable participant in this team." To me, that would smack of elitism.

Pointing out that someone's highest degree is a law degree that lacks the only accreditation that actually matters for a law degree? That comes off, to me at least, as rightfully critical of one's qualifications.

I realize that you feel like it was a cheap shot. I realize that you feel like it is a cheap shot especially in light of the fact that the school has RA. I also realize that MA has an RA non-ABA law school that is, of course, fully "legitimate" as an educational institution.

But regular folks, on civil juries especially, can often find themselves very critical of dubious qualifications. To date the only jury I ever served on (a civil case) had at least three senior citizens who repeatedly referred to a physician (party to the case) as a "fake doctor" because he was an Osteopathic Physician (D.O.). He was a surgeon who was fully licensed by the state. And the opposing counsel only had to poke that bear once or twice to awaken the inner snob in members of the jury. None of them had medical training. Few had college educations, period. But all felt qualified to judge a D.O.'s medical training as inadequate to that of an M.D.

Again, I don't want to get into a pissing contest over whose anecdotal experience or personal opinion matters more here. You could very well be right. Or I. Or maybe somewhere in the middle.

I guess my point with all of this is that it is an interesting case and has the potential to be groundbreaking. A few have addressed what could be the broader implications for DEAC. For me, I view it as the potential implications for U.S. accreditation.

 

Well, the more relevant bit was that the woman in question, who has two grad degrees (DEAC and RA), served as a Director of Accreditation for a DEAC school, and now owns a consulting business focused on accreditation of new schools. This particular reviewer seems obviously qualified: a former university admin (HMU is small, but then again so is WLC). I think DEAC lawyers can conceivably poke a big hole in this statement. I don't think the case rests on this point though.

 

That's a sort of circular resume builder. She worked for one school as a director of accreditation dealing with DEAC and now works as an evaluator for DEAC. But also sells her DEAC experience to the highest bidder. I mean, I'm sure she knows the people and processes of DEAC very well. But that experience wouldn't necessarily imply that she knows how to fairly and objectively apply standards. And, if her credentials and experience are vastly different from her counterparts at other more established schools then I imagine this could effect her credibility in court.

By that logic, any self-employed consultant in any field should be automatically regarded as an expert in their field. In some cases that's true. In many other situations, I'm sure you would agree, it is just a convenient thing people do to fill in gaps on their resumes.

It would also, I imagine, present as an interesting conflict of interest that an attorney might have fun with.

I'm sure that would be an obvious response. I don't think it would be as obviously damning as some might believe.

Indeed. And, outside of this case, it wouldn't be the first time that on-site evaluators were criticized. I looked at the DEAC fees once. They are pretty massive, especially for an upstart. Among the expenses that I found rather galling was the need to pay for business class tickets to fly the team to your school for the evaluation.

That's an expense that I, working for a major company, can hardly justify for mid-level executives. Business class tickets are expensive. Were a lawsuit to paint a picture of marginally competent part-timers "dabbling" in accreditation, racking up massive hotel and airline bills and then dashing the future of the college that paid for their presence due to their own malfeasance I imagine that the bad press could be especially bad.

 

Ooooh. Yeah, this carries certain psychological punch. A group of people using their authority to demand business class flights (WTF, DEAC?) and then botching the review, potentially driving a small school out of business. Good narrative.

Seriously, why business class? Because they can?

 

Sorry no, I just logged back in and some knuckle head had overwritten the index file. It is back up.

 

All. I believe our complaint is 1 million percent justified and 1 million percent accurate in every way. I would suggest that a report from anyone with the errors in our chairs report warrants inspection and our right to criticisms and to call into question the capabilities of the team that produced it, given it was the ONLY source of field data gathering relied upon by DEAC, to take surprise, unwarranted, public action against us.

However, and I want to stress this, DEAC is the culprit here, and its director. Totally fair game. Their agents, honestly, are individuals and our intent is not to have them individually criticized publicly outside the merits of our case. The process we will go through will work itself out, in public.

DEL

 

They charge $25,000 to appeal a commission decision. Think about that, and the person who over hears the appeal is an ex-deac-commission member. And ANOTHER $25,000 if you want to speak to the commission people in person. So DEAC charges $50,000 just for the chance to try and talk to them about something they did.

Huh. It would almost be cheaper just to sue them. Oh wait.

 

Also for fees, the September site visit was the 3rd from them in three years. Six people visited us. SIX! And yes, you have to pay to cover some pretty nice travel specs and lodging, meals, what not. It was either $1,500 per person or $2,500 per person I don't remember, its in their book somewhere. DEAC doing site visits at WLC had, IMHO, become a fairly profitable regular income stream for them.

And just to grieve, in the show cause letter they didn't mention any of the prior visits, including the one that approved all the 'substantive' change. You read the show cause and it sounds like they were surprised about the past 6 years and just noticed.

 

Yep, you got it.

 

You are demanding 'damages' of $17.4 million. (Does the complaint contain any explanation of how that number was calculated?) You must have some idea of why WLC is demanding the money and where you anticipate it would ultimately be going. Since WLC is a non-profit and presumably without individual owners, I'm guessing that the money would go into a college bank account. So who has access to that account and under what conditions? Does WLC anticipate continuing in business even if it cuts all ties with DEAC and is no longer accredited? If not, where would its assets go when it's finally wound up?

So why are you trying to kill DEAC?? Doing that will only hurt many innocent schools that are currently accredited by DEAC, their employees and their thousands of students. In my opinion you could end up doing tremendous harm here.

 

So what do you propose they do?

 

Don't try to kill DEAC and don't try to use WLC's accreditation difficulties as an occasion for somebody to get rich.

If there's any truth to WLC's allegations that DEAC isn't properly following their own procedures (I'd like to hear DEAC's side before I decide who I believe) then WLC could petition to court to order DEAC to behave properly. They could even petition to court to order DEAC to pay WLC's legal costs and to waive some of their fees for forcing WLC to pursue whatever extraordinary processes were made necessary by DEAC's screwing up (assuming the court finds that it did).

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of alternative accreditors left alive out there if WLC decides that it's burned its bridges with DEAC and decides to look elsewhere. I'm guessing that it probably doesn't have the resources to apply for RA.

 

In our demand for releif (at the bottom of the complaint):

"Entering a permanent injunction requiring DEAC to follow all lawful procedures set forth in its Standards of Accreditation protocol and those required by the federal regulations and federal common law due process;"

 

We plan on being around forever. You don't know me, thats OK, but so you know I used to give out scholarship's to graduating high school kids with my own money from AIMS. My brother died of a cocaine overdoes the day I started my job as Aspen president, so I created (with my own money not the schools, first time this has been made public) a bachelors and masters in addiction counseling through Aspen, got it NAADAC approved so more addiction counselors could enter the market as at the time there was a shortage, and we charged $85 a credit hour, and had Title IV available (for what it was meant for). Had big plans for WLC for the public good. Can/will do many of them without worthless (IMHO) DEAC accreditation. I have 3 degrees form schools accredited at the time by DETC. This isn't some joy ride.

 

One day WLC will offer a DA in History!!!!

 

Ph.D. in History.

 

Ok. I stand corrected. I told you are the pole sitter. I am just following.

 

Na, just a smo who tried. You'll be the Dean, and we'll actually teach people stuff. What a concept.

 

I know right...but being a Dean is tough. I have been through 3 of them. The job ages you so quickly..

 

I can vouch for all of that. I saw it with my own eyes. Oh, and you got that nursing program throught Aspen that special accreditation as well, was it CCNE? I don't know, something like that anyway.