Most 4-year colleges are accredited by one of these regionally-based organizations:
New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)
Higher Learning Commission (HLC)
Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE)
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU)
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)
WASC Senior College and University Commission
There is a movement, however, to add another accrediting body, the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE). The university systems of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Tennessee have joined, and CPHE plans to complete its accreditor application to the US Department of Ed by summer 2027. So this system is not yet in effect, but there is a movement afoot to make it so.
For states that switch to being accredited by the CPHE, what do people anticipate the impacts would be on colleges? Faculty and staff? Students? Or are there likely to be few impacts that would be seen as compared to the current accreditation bodies?
Pinging some folks who work in higher ed (though I know I’m missing some) and/or have posted on the Tuition Exchange threads
I assume, given the states, there’s a political angle there. Yes, it’s the parent cafe but why is a new accreditation needed? Will it be in lieu of another - like they’ll drop the current, etc. Or why else is it needed?
From the article, SACS (the regional board that includes Louisiana) and CPHE:
share criteria on institutional integrity, sound finances and a commitment to “continuous improvement.” Both include references to academic freedom, though CPHE goes a step further to include a standard for “intellectual diversity.”
Based on my reading, there are a few talking points that proponents are using:
Accreditors should be focused on the type of institution (such as public universities) rather than a regional zone that needs to focus on a variety of types of institutions
There is a degree of higher ed bureaucracy that the new accreditation body would not require, and thus would presumably lower the cost of tuition and fees for students
The cost of accreditation would be less, by the accrediting body “maximizing efficiency…by specializing in working with public institutions,” and because “travel and communication are easier to bridge over long distances” than previously (i.e. I interpret as there will be more virtual meetings than there are with current accreditors)
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) appears staunchly opposed to this move.
Based on my reading, if CPHE is approved by the feds as an accreditor, then the state university systems that join would leave their current accreditor to be accredited under this new body.
Although there is definitely a political movement that has spawned this idea, I am wondering how folks think the impacts would actually play out. For instance, I have heard some professors bemoan the number of administrators at their institutions. If this new accreditation body required significantly fewer, would they be in favor of this action? Or are the types of administrators that might be eliminated not the ones that they think need to be (i.e. perhaps student support services might be eliminated whereas PR bloat might be left alone or expanded)?
Or is this the type of thing that talking heads might spew a lot of info on, but that in effect wouldn’t have much of an impact on the actual stakeholders? (For instance, when we rent a car, it doesn’t matter if it’s Enterprise or Hertz or Budget…for us, it’s generally a pretty equivalent experience and we just go with the one that has the best price on the type of vehicle we want.)
This is actually a nightmare, as was seen in NCLB. The standards for “improvement” are set by people who have absolutely no knowledge or understanding of academic pedagogy, or education in general. They pick some simple metric that is actually meaningless, and demand that it be improved every year. The better performing a college is, the less improvement it will show, and eventually, they will start penalizing colleges which are doing the best.
All colleges which have claimed the want to increase “intellectual diversity” have gone about it by firing anybody whose “diversity” didn’t agree with their personal beliefs.
I’ve seen this before, when fundamentalists wanted “diversity of opinions” regarding evolution, and they demanded that Young Earth Creationism be considered as a serious scientific hypothesis.
This is nothing more than an attempt at purging of people who do share the belief systems of the people who are creating this new “Accreditation Commission”. Everything there is very reminiscent of the Soviet Union.
First step: Start pretending that historical and scientific facts are, in fact, “opinions”.
Second step: In the name of “diversity of opinion”, demand that historical or scientist claims that have no factual basis be taught as though they were just as likely as the actual facts.
Last step: demand that the universities only teach these claims, and demand that the claims will now be taught as “facts”. Purge all textbooks that reject these claims and purge all faculty who won’t teach these claims as though they are facts.
Accreditation standards are what actually runs modern American colleges and universities.
Any number of colleges’ policies are in place because accreditors require them.* These policies include mostly-invisible things like appropriate accounting practices, less-invisible but often take-for-granted things like avoidance of conflicts of interest and policies surrounding maintenance of student records, and obvious things like making sure curricula cover what they should and faculty are qualified to teach what they teach.
Basically, accreditors have a massive amount of power. An accreditation system that is born out of a political movement is actually pretty scary.
*Well, and some colleges’ policies—like my own’s insistence that student learning outcomes be placed on the first page of syllabi—are not actually required by accreditors, but are designed to make the lives of accreditors easier during their review of policies and procedures. But so it goes, on the whole it’s more good than bad/annoying.