A race to the bottom?

Postsecondary Accreditation Cannot Become a Race to the Bottom (ED)

"The goal is to prevent a race to the bottom in quality standards among accrediting agencies and ensure that institutions cannot switch to an accrediting agency with less rigorous standards simply to evade accountability from an accrediting agency that investigates practices or takes corrective action against an institution. For this purpose, the HEA requires the Department to review and approve an institution eligible to participate in the federal aid programs before it can switch its accrediting agency or add an additional accreditor."

"Recent changes to the accreditation landscape, such as the expansion of former regional accreditors to now accredit institutions outside their typical geographic boundaries and a new law in Florida that mandates public institutions to switch accrediting agencies before their next accreditation cycle, have been confusing to institutions and may also have a chilling effect on accrediting agencies as they seek to effectively do their job."

Today, the Department is releasing several new guidance documents to help inform institutions and accrediting agencies about their responsibilities related to these issues. The new guidance details:

1. The process that institutions must follow if seeking to switch accrediting agencies or obtain accreditation by multiple agencies. This process requires that institutions get approval from the Department before they submit an application to a new accrediting agency.
2. A listing of some of the factors the Department may consider in evaluating institutions that aim to switch accrediting agencies. These factors, which are intended to ensure that all institutions are held to high standards, will assess whether the change is motivated by a desire to improve institutional quality or evade rigor or oversight. The Department will also assess whether the institution’s desire to change accreditors is voluntary.
3. How accrediting agencies should demonstrate that they meet the long-standing requirement in the HEA and Department regulations that agencies have a voluntary membership of institutions in order to be recognized by the Secretary.

These clarifications are intended to ensure that institutions are held to high standards, and that an institution subject to oversight by its current accrediting agency cannot simply seek to evade accountability by jumping to a different accrediting agency.

Full blog: https://blog.ed.gov/2022/07/postsecondary-accreditation-cannot-become-a-race-to-the-bottom/

 

So - despite the pronouncements about not differentiating RA from National -- ALL accreditors will fit on one or the other of specific rungs in the accreditation ladder. And no jumping (at least downwards) by schools. "Divide et impera." (Divide and rule - Julius Caesar.) Differentiation has been replaced by --- more complex and nuanced differentiation.

 

I was just looking through CHEA's list of accrediting organizations and realized a few things.
1. They still refer to regional accrediting agencies as regional but refer to national accrediting agencies as national faith-related except for DEAC, which is listed as institutional
2. Many programmatic accreditors are only recognized by CHEA and not ED, e.g., CSWE, CACREP, IACBE, ACBSP, COAMFTE-AAMFT, etc.
3. CHEA or ED does not currently recognize AACSB. I am sure that's a nonissue for AACSB, though.

 

And even if it were an issue --- it wouldn't be.

 

IIRC, this was because the Department wanted to focus on accreditors that were enabling Title IV eligibility, which does not apply to most (all?) programmatic accreditors.

 

Hearing more and more about the Florida situation being a bigger issue for the RA system changes than the previous DOE issues.

 

Because the US having the best university system in the world isn't good enough for Florida?

 

They don't want the best, they want a politically compliant university system, to their politics. Bonus points they get to paint university as the evil that is pushing woke and weakening America. The right side of the political spectrum has become increasingly anti intellectualism.

 

Agree. As an end goal, I think they want to shut down the universities (at least in Florida), to make it harder to obtain one if you live in Florida. Bonus side-effect of making it even more difficult for Floridians to move out of state/out of the country.

 

Funny how each side says this. And each side has people catastrophizing with extreme views (interpretations) about the motivations of others as Rachel does. I would say that neither side is truly academic. Heck, as some humorous examples have shown (non conservative professors who easily pulled one over more than once on the academic community by using appropriate left leaning pseudo jargon) even the academic community is not always a bastion of intellectualism.

I don't know if we want to fix it or can. Whether it is psychological research or hard science research they both have numerous examples of fraudulent or unreplicatable research. There are various reasons why. These range from sloppiness to outright manipulation of data. Some recent science examples have hit the news where on the basis of the false data, millions of dollars have been spent. Some famous psychological experiments with conclusions about humans are in question. There is even a web site that tracks retractions of studies and there is no shortage of items for them to publish. Some researchers with multiple retractions (often not for innocent reasons).

 

You're using the failures of peer review and the issues with specific academic disciplines to claim that "both sides" are anti-intellectual. That doesn't track at all. When looking at the political spectrum as a whole being anti-intellectual or not, it's obvious that anyone left of Biden is not anti-intellectual. The data is clear, Republicans increasingly doubt experts, deny scientific facts like climate change and support candidates who think the same: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/11/republicans-are-increasingly-antagonistic-toward-experts-heres-why-that-matters/

The Democratic Party never called for the elimination of critical thinking in schools, as the Texas GOP once did (https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-06-27/gop-opposes-critical-thinking/)
The Democratic Party isn't equating attempts at sex education to grooming kids, as Republicans are doing currently: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/04/school-sex-education-grooming-protecting-kids/629556/
The Democratic Party isn't attempting to ban what teachers can teach, as Republicans are doing in numerous states: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/heres-the-long-list-of-topics-republicans-want-banned-from-the-classroom/2022/02

This doesn't even get into attempts to dismantle public schools, abolish the Department of Education, and numerous policy positions the GOP takes and amplifies that are absolutely anti-intellectual or simply lies.

 

Eye roll! I know. It is the same on both sides. Touches a nerve. People jump up and go, "Oh no, my side blah...blah" and the other side "blah...blah..." and wallpaper you with links and other information. And me, I laugh at both sides so busy demonizing the other side and filled with certainty and true believers.

 

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Edit: Realized we're outside the political forum. Pardon the diversion.

 

Saying "both sides do X" while only laughing at the one side is not, IMO, being fair and balanced. It's pretending to be fair and balanced in an attempt to avoid criticism of your favorite party.

 

Dustin and Rachel, you guys made my day. Predictable humanity. Ideologues.

 

Back on topic, I noticed that the guidelines say the Department will not find an accreditation switch reasonable if the organization "Has been subject to a probation or equivalent, show cause order, or suspension order during the preceding 24 months."

We've seen a few NA make the switch to RA, has anyone ever "downgraded" to NA from RA? I don't mean like Morris Brown College where they had a period with no accreditation, but rather a school actively trying to obtain secondary accreditation. In this case, I wonder if on a show-cause order for something like financial stability, a school could have previously pursued the less expensive DEAC. Maybe this never happens.

 

You say a lot without really saying anything.

 

Liberty held SACS continuously from 1980 and additionally held TRACS from 1984 to 2008. Liberty underwent financial challenges and a SACS probation circa the 80s and 90s.

 

Most likely an institution in trouble with a "Regional" Accreditor would take those issues into an application with a "National" Accreditor and that would make the application difficult. The Department of Education pointed out there aren't really substantive differences between the two accreditors in terms of what they do qualitatively. I believe that Trinity got in trouble during the accreditation process (Regional) for among other things financial issues. They went to DEAC and were denied accreditation due to financial issues. Changing accreditors didn't address the underlying issue and didn't result in accreditation. They maintained this wasn't true but then I believe Dr. Bear posted that their campus with multiple buildings went on the auction block.