The accreditation last month of Jones International University, a first for a virtual institution, has come under fire from the American Association of University Professors.
In a letter (http://www.aaup.org/319let.htm) to Steven D. Crow, executive director of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the A.A.U.P. said: “By all public accounts, this virtual institution presents a very weak case for accreditation. Indeed it embodies most of our major worries about the denigration of quality that could follow this apparently inexorable march toward on-line education.”
Although the letter expresses the association’s “shock and dismay” at North Central’s decision, officials of the accrediting agency said the objections would not affect their action.
Pamela S. Pease, the university’s president, said she did not expect the protest to have much impact on her institution.
The letter was written by James E. Perley, head of the A.A.U.P.'s committee on accrediting. In an interview last week, he called it “a response to a tendency to define any kind of institution as a higher-education institution.”
“We’re very concerned about accrediting agencies’ being willing to grant any institution accreditation, regardless of what kind of standard there is for quality of education,” he said.
“The bottom-line issue for me, personally, is one of quality.”
In the letter, he cited what he said was an apparent lack of quality in the university, including the presence of only two full-time professors. Jones has 56 faculty members, but 54 of them are adjuncts, who hold full-time jobs elsewhere. He also cited the brevity of the university’s courses, its lack of learning resources, such as libraries and research laboratories, and the small proportion of students who seek degrees from the institution.
According to Mr. Perley, many of those shortcomings violate the North Central Association’s own criteria for accreditation.
Mr. Crow, the accrediting agency’s director, said the A.A.U.P. was misinformed. “Some of the statements they make about the institution, I don’t think are well founded in fact,” he said. “They don’t know much about Jones International University.” He noted that the A.A.U.P. did not have access to the research done by the accrediting team and was evidently “informed not by real study, but by what they’ve read.”
He acknowledged that someone comparing Jones with a traditional university might think that it falls short of North Central’s requirements.
But, he said, Jones meets the intent of those requirements in other ways.
Mr. Crow also said the association’s complaints may be partially based on objections to on-line institutions in general, but Mr. Perley disagreed.
He said Jones was representative of a growing number of for-profit institutions focusing on courses that provide students with industry-specific skills. “To include them under the umbrella of traditionally defined higher education is an insult,” he said.
Mr. Perley said that the A.A.U.P. had no objections to on-line education itself, and that the group would not necessarily object to a virtual university’s gaining accreditation.
“It would be possible to see such an institution develop,” he said, “but I sure would like to see faculty members involved in helping formulate that, and I’d like to see it be based on something other than a profit motive.”
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