Washington, D.C. -- An Education Department review panel has found serious problems with a Christian-college accrediting agency that some have charged never should have won government recognition.
The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity voted last month to give the accrediting body 18 months to improve before facing another government review. At the same time, the Education Department is preparing to change the way the accrediting group is described in government publications, to avoid what the department has called the appearance of a federal endorsement of religious beliefs.
The accrediting group is the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, known as TRACS. It says it accredits “Christian institutions which believe in Biblical inerrancy, Biblical authority, the historicity of the first 11 chapters of Genesis including special creation as opposed to evolution, and other doctrines of the Gospel.”
Officials of TRACS maintain that they are doing an excellent job of accrediting institutions that, because of their religious beliefs, are uncomfortable with other accreditors. J. Gordon Henry, executive director of TRACS, says he was “very disappointed” with the Education Department’s action but was confident that the agency would keep federal recognition.
TRACS accredits 11 colleges and has started the process of accrediting another 19.
The federal review process is crucial to accreditors and their colleges. Students can receive federal aid only if they attend institutions that are accredited by agencies recognized by the Education Department. Final authority over recognition rests with the Education Secretary, but the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity is the primary overseer of accreditors and makes recommendations to the department.
TRACS was recognized in 1991, when Lamar Alexander was Education Secretary. He approved the association even though the advisory committee had recommended against it three times from 1988 to 1991.
At the time, Mr. Alexander was pushing for greater diversity in accreditation and said he thought TRACS had demonstrated its quality. But many educators criticized his decision.
The initial recognition was for two years, but changes in federal law governing accreditation, and a change in Administrations, resulted in the delay of a review of TRACS until this year.
Members of the advisory committee say they doubted that TRACS was using stringent-enough standards to insure the quality of colleges.
“Our real concern wasn’t over doctrine, but whether they were in the process of accrediting schools which truly gave degrees in line with other similar degrees,” says Richard F. Rosser, a member of the committee and former president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
Several members of the committee cite as an example of the problems with TRACS its decision to start the process of accrediting the Nashville Bible College. According to information supplied by TRACS to the Education Department, it granted “accreditation candidate status” to the college when it had 12 full-time students, 7 part-time students, and 2 part-time faculty members.
Mr. Rosser says it “begins to be difficult” to think that a college the size of Nashville Bible College can provide a real bachelor’s degree.
Indeed, reports about the association’s accrediting colleges based on criteria of theology rather than quality have dogged the group since its initial application for recognition by the Education Department. An independent researcher, Steve Levicoff, published a book called When the TRACS Stop Short in 1993 that charged the group with approving shoddy programs. He called on the Education Department to withdraw its recognition.
TRACS officials have called the book inaccurate, but the Education Department found that the group based some improvements on criticisms raised in the book.
Randall E. Bell, executive director of the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges, says some of the institutions TRACS has accredited had also applied to the Bible-college group and were “some distance from meeting our standards.”
Mr. Bell declined to name examples and acknowledged the possibility that those institutions had improved after their contact with his organization.
Another concern, raised in an Education Department report, is the way TRACS is described in government publications. Most accrediting groups are described in generic terms. The description of the Bible-college association, for example, says only that it is a group for Bible colleges. The TRACS description, however, notes several of its doctrinal tests, including Biblical inerrancy.
The Education Department report found that this could “erroneously convey the impression that the department is endorsing a particular set of doctrines.” It recommended the use of more neutral language.
Mr. Henry, the TRACS executive director, says there was nothing wrong with the Education Department’s stating his association’s doctrine. “TRACS has no identity crisis about who we are,” he says.
He does say, however, that some educators have told him that if he put the group’s theological views “on the back burner,” TRACS might have an easier time with the Education Department.
As for the quality of institutions that TRACS accredits, Mr. Henry says his group is thorough. Nashville Bible College was admitted as a candidate for accreditation only because it promised to hire more faculty members, he says.
Mark Cotten, who is Nashville Bible’s chairman of the board, vice-president for student affairs, and an instructor of the New Testament, praised TRACS. The college now has three full-time faculty members, he says, noting that TRACS had encouraged the expansion.
Mr. Cotten says other accreditors would not have helped him because they do not understand the mission of small religious colleges. “Those fellows at Tracs Do.”