The association that accredits community colleges in California and Hawaii violated federal rules in choosing its commissioners and lacks sufficient controls against conflicts of interest, the U.S. Department of Education has found.
The opinion is a narrow victory for the California community-college system in an increasingly public fight between the system and its accreditor, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, which is part of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Community-college officials have complained that the accreditor handpicks its commissioners and is too quick to punish colleges, while accrediting officials believe that the colleges should meet higher standards.
In a letter dated Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle, Kay W. Gilcher, director of the accreditation division of the Education Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education, wrote that the accreditor was in violation of several federal regulations in the way it selects its commissioners. The review was undertaken in a response to complaints lodged in May by the community-college system’s chancellor, Jack Scott.
For instance, the letter says, public members of the group that selects the commissioners are not sufficiently independent from the community colleges they oversee.
In addition, faculty, staff, and trustee representatives of the committee that selects commissioners are chosen using an informal process that “does not provide transparency to the selection process and, therefore, does not provide clear and effective controls against conflicts of interest,” the letter says.
The letter, which asks the accreditor to submit a plan to comply with the rules by November 1, does not attempt to mediate the colleges’ broader complaints against the accreditor. But Mr. Scott said the findings validate the system’s view that the accreditor has failed to listen to the colleges it oversees.
“There’s an issue of control, of unwillingness to allow the field to have the kind of input that their own bylaws require,” Mr. Scott said. “That’s all I’m saying, and that’s at the base of what the Department of Education is saying to them: You have not worked hard to avert the conflict of interest. You need to reach out to the field.”
Officials of the accrediting association said on Thursday that they planned to make changes after fully reviewing the letter. But they said the department’s findings resulted from changes in how the federal rules were interpreted, not from any policies that would lead to potential conflicts of interest.
“Each of the people selected for appointment to the commission are outstanding, independent professionals who would take umbrage that they don’t exert their own professional judgment with regards to the decisions the commission makes,” said Michael Rota, chair of the accrediting commission and chancellor of Honolulu Community College.