Adjunct Professor in Washington State Battles Regional Accreditor

A part-time instructor in Washington State says an accrediting agency has “dodged” a complaint he filed against it with the U.S. Department of Education. What’s worse, he argues, department officials are letting the accreditor get away with it. But that doesn’t mean he’s giving up.

Keith Hoeller, an adjunct who teaches philosophy at a number of community colleges, complained to the department about the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges in September (The Chronicle, November 7).

He accused the accreditor of failing to uphold its own standards when it came to assessing the use of part-time instructors in the state’s 32 two-year colleges. Adjuncts in the colleges outnumber full-timers by at least three to one, even though the accreditor’s 1994 standards call it “essential” to maintain a “core of full-time instructional faculty.” Dr. Hoeller and a state senator who supports his cause had complained directly to Northwest in March but had never heard back from the agency.

In October, the Education Department ordered the accreditor to respond. At a regularly scheduled meeting last week, department officials reviewed Northwest, acknowledged Dr. Hoeller’s complaint, and extended the agency’s recognition for five years.

About a week earlier, Northwest had written to the department in response to Dr. Hoeller’s “unsubstantiated charges.” Sandra E. Elman, head of Northwest’s college commission, explained that it had revised its standards to deal more explicitly with part-timers. She said she had never received Dr. Hoeller’s March complaint.

She wrote that none of Washington’s two-year colleges “is presently under sanction for reasons of over-reliance on adjuncts or inadequate compensation levels for this group.” She concluded that the “commission’s standards do appropriately address the role and use of part-time faculty in institutions accredited” by Northwest.

Dr. Hoeller had hoped that federal officials would take up his case. “If they’re not going to take complaints seriously, which is probably the only real oversight the accreditation system gets, it seems to me the system is broken.”

Dr. Hoeller has already fired off another letter, telling department officials that he would take his case over their heads -- to their boss, Richard W. Riley, the Secretary of Education -- or to Congress.