The role of accreditation has remained a hot topic here since President Obama took office nearly two years ago, with the administration and Congress putting pressure on accreditors to tighten their oversight of higher education. But until this week a key government panel that helps to regulate the accrediting agencies has been absent from the debate.
The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the education secretary on accreditation issues, was overhauled by Congress when it reauthorized the Higher Education Act in 2008. The law disbanded the previous 15-member committee, whose members were appointed entirely by the education secretary, and replaced it with an 18-member group, 12 of whose members are appointed by Congress.
On Wednesday the newly formed committee will hold its first substantive meetings in more than two years. The panel, known as Naciqi, is scheduled to review the status of several regional and programmatic accrediting organizations, including one that has been at the center of Congressional debate over the role of accreditors.
After reviewing analyses by Department of Education staff, the committee will recommend to Education Secretary Arne Duncan whether to approve the organizations as continued gatekeepers of federal financial aid.
Although the composition of the committee reflects Washington’s deep political divide (Congressional Democrats and Republicans each appointed six members to the committee, and Mr. Duncan nominated the remaining six), there is, so far, no hint of partisan bickering. In November, committee members unanimously chose their chairman, State Rep. Cameron C. Staples, a Democrat of Connecticut. The group also is split along various sectors of higher education, including representatives from public, private nonprofit, and for-profit institutions. It remains to be seen whether those differences will bedevil the committee or if the controversies that contributed to the demise of the previous panel are revived.
During President George W. Bush’s second term, Naciqi was largely seen as pushing for the kind of strict accountability measures advocated by then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, such as demanding that accreditors require institutions to provide proof of student achievement.
Mr. Staples said that there has been a sense of “comfort and camaraderie” among the members of the revamped panel. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be differences of opinion, he said, but the goal of the group is to handle them “in a way that doesn’t reflect partisan or philosophical differences.”
2 Accreditors in the Spotlight
Two issues will come up during this week’s meetings that may test that resolve.
On Friday, the committee will review a report by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which has come under fire from Congress for its accreditation of for-profit institutions. This year the Education Department’s inspector general called on the education secretary to reconsider the commission’s status as an accreditor. The inspector general did so after investigating how the commission approved American InterContinental University—a for-profit, online institution—despite concerns about the value of academic credit the institutions awarded for some courses.
The Higher Learning Commission has made policy changes based on warnings from the inspector general, and also based on its last full review by the committee in 2007 and new requirements in the 2008 higher-education reauthorization bill. An Education Department analysis, prepared for this week’s meetings, identifies one area that it says the commission may still need to revise to fully comply with federal regulations, related to how the accrediting agency approves new locations for colleges. The staff report recommends, however, that the committee accept its analysis and require only a follow-up report from the Higher Learning Commission in one year.
“We are pleased with the department’s report and recommendation,” Sylvia Manning, the commission’s president, wrote in an e-mail this week to The Chronicle. She said that the commission hoped that Naciqi “will come to the same conclusion as the department has.”
Wall Street analysts will be watching the committee’s actions on the Higher Learning Commission, which now accredits all of the major for-profit colleges, to gauge the effect on that industry.
The committee will also review the Education Department’s recommendation to reject the accrediting status of the American Academy for Liberal Education, which accredits a small group of private, religiously affiliated liberal-arts colleges. A department staff report identified more than 40 regulations that the academy is not complying with.
The academy had been popular with some conservative scholars and policy makers but has consistently run afoul of federal regulations, raising concerns among some in the Education Department that it was doing too little to measure student learning. In 2007, Ms. Spellings revoked the academy’s ability to accredit new organizations. Naciqi recommended restoring the academy’s accrediting status later that year, but when Ms. Spellings did so in July 2008, she limited the recognition to a three-year period, rather than the usual five years.
“Department staff has serious concerns regarding the agency’s ability to come into compliance due to the depth and the extent of issues surrounding the agency’s administrative capacity, inconsistent application of the agency’s standards and policies, and its overall reliability as a recognized accrediting agency,” the department’s report concluded.
