For the second time in less than two years, officials at the U.S. Department of Education have recommended against approving a controversial accrediting agency that primarily oversees for-profit colleges. But their finding may have little effect on the accreditor’s future.
Friday evening, the department released a 244-page document advising that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, known as Acics, fails to meet nearly 60 federal regulations on accreditation. The analysis is a draft of a report that was meant to be released in May at a hearing scheduled to consider the accreditor’s status. That hearing was cancelled following a judge’s order in a lawsuit filed by the council.
The draft identified numerous minor shortcomings on the part of the accrediting agency. For example, the document said, Acics must update its directory of accredited institutions and show that it has enough staff to carry out its responsibilities. But the report also found major problems. It said the agency had failed to show that its standards and practices are widely accepted by educators, licensing agencies, and employers.
The staff report “makes clear” that the council “is a wholly unfit and unreliable evaluator of higher education institutions,” said a news release from The Century Foundation, one of two groups that had sued the department for its release.
In a written statement, the council responded that the draft report contains “numerous inaccuracies.” The council’s president, Michelle Edwards, said in an email that the organization is preparing to release a more detailed response to the report.
A letter from department officials — not written by the staff who prepared the report — also downplayed the significance of the findings, calling the report “an incomplete, pre-decisional document that may include errors of fact or omissions on the part of staff analysts who, in this case, did not benefit from receiving a response or additional information from the Agency.”
In that letter, the department also said the draft analysis will “not be considered by the Department in any future evaluations or assessments, including the review of the 2016 decision because the criteria for initial recognition and those that were the subject of the 2016 decision are not the same.”
DeVos Intervenes
The release of the document is the latest turn in a long-running bureaucratic struggle that shows just how hard it is to pull the plug on an accrediting agency.
In June 2016, the National Advisory Committee for Institutional Quality and Integrity voted to recommend that the council lose its federal recognition.
The vote was consistent with a department analysis that found the accreditor out of compliance with more than 20 areas of federal regulation. The violations included failing to verify the job-placement data of the institutions it oversees, failing to establish policies to prevent conflicts of interest among members of its governing board, and failing to promptly sanction institutions accused of wrongdoing.
The education secretary at the time, John B. King, officially revoked the council’s recognition in December 2016. The council filed a lawsuit arguing that the department had not followed proper procedures in reaching its conclusions. At the same time, it re-applied to the department for recognition.
A federal district judge ruled in favor of the accreditor in March, finding the department had not properly considered some 36,000 pages of pages of material that the accreditor had submitted nearly two years ago.
Then the current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, said the council’s recognition status would be restored while officials reviewed those documents.
And DeVos cancelled a May hearing to consider the council’s application for recognition. The analysis released Friday is a draft document prepared for that hearing, which was to be held by the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity.
The staff report had been sent to the accreditor but not released publicly until Friday. The council objected to the document being released because it was a draft, without the responses and possible corrections that would be given to the advisory committee.
The council had sought in court to prevent the report from being released, arguing that it was part of a confidential process that allowed for a frank exchange of information between accreditors and the department. The accreditor dropped its legal objections, it said in a written statement, after it “submitted an enormous amount of information to the Department, correcting numerous inaccuracies” and “providing additional materials that, we believe, clearly demonstrate our compliance with recognition standards.”
Alex Elson, a lawyer for the National Student Legal Defense Network, said it would be odd for the department to consider the council’s objections to the staff report but not the staff’s own findings. DeVos’s critics have cited her decision to restore Acics’s recognition as one of many data points demonstrating that she is steering the Education Department away from efforts to hold for-profit institutions accountable.
“This will shed light whether or not she’s completely ignoring the facts on the ground,” Elson said, “or willing to heed their advice.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
