How a Troubled Accreditor’s Search for Members Is Raising New Questions About Its Integrity

Three years ago, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools was one of the nation’s largest accrediting agencies, with nearly 270 member institutions enrolling more than a half-million students. Now, as one of the smallest, it’s facing financial pressure to recruit new members. That, in turn, is leading some consumer advocates to worry about possible shoddiness in its oversight.

In 2016 officials at the U.S. Department of Education, under President Barack Obama, revoked the accreditor’s recognition, meaning it could no longer serve as a gatekeeper for federal financial aid. That decision sent many of the agency’s members — largely for-profit career colleges — fleeing to find a new accreditor and preserve their access to federal dollars.

A judge’s ruling in a lawsuit, saying that the department had “procedurally erred” in its revocation, together with a reversal of the decision by Trump appointees in the Education Department, preserved the recognition.

But the council’s future is far from certain. The accrediting body is now among the smallest, with 75 members enrolling about 79,000 undergraduates.

The exodus, along with the sudden closure last year of dozens of campuses owned by one member, the Education Corporation of America, has left the council in a financial pit. The organization expects to lose $2 million this year and may not be back in the black for several years, according to news accounts of comments by Michelle Edwards, the council’s president.

She spoke this week to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, or CHEA, a membership association of some 3,000 colleges that has its own recognition process for accreditors.

The accrediting agency has taken several cost-cutting measures, reducing its staff as it seeks to add dozens of new members. Edwards was not available for comment.

Antoinette Flores, a higher-education expert at the Center for American Progress, a think tank, said the situation creates a “moral hazard” for the accreditor. If it needs members just to keep its doors open, it may be pressured to accredit low-performing institutions and to accept new members that would not be approved by any other accreditor.

Many of the council’s remaining members are themselves small organizations that face their own financial struggles. The average enrollment at the council’s member colleges is just over 1,000, according to federal data. And the Education Department has restricted the flow of federal student aid — a policy called heightened cash monitoring — to 30 percent of the council’s member institutions.

The accreditor also has a poor track record of penalizing troubled institutions, according to the center, which outlined its concerns in a letter urging CHEA to deny recognition to the independent-college council, known as Acics. (CHEA recognition has no bearing on an accreditor’s ability to receive federal student aid.)

For example, after Acics approved Virginia International University for three years of accreditation, the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia uncovered allegations of widespread plagiarism, grade inflation, and other concerns about academic quality.

The colleges that remain with the council probably could not have gotten accreditation elsewhere, said Spiros Protopsaltis, an associate professor of education policy at George Mason University. “That tells you there is definitely a market for schools seeking the lowest bars of entry, which is obviously very dangerous,” he said.

The council approved several new members for accreditation in 2017, according to its online directory, including one that since then has received a warning about its compliance with the accreditor’s standards.

Despite the accreditor’s troubles, four other colleges are now in the process of earning its approval, including one in Spain and one in China.

“Either they have no clue what they’re doing,” Protopsaltis said, “or that is the only place where they would have a shot at accreditation.”

The San Diego University for Integrative Studies is one of the two domestic colleges seeking accreditation from the council. The university offers certificate and graduate programs, mostly online. It has been in existence for about 20 years, but the plan was always that it should be accredited, said Raymond J. Trybus, its president.

The university started the process in 2015, he said, but began to look at other accreditors after the Education Department took its adverse action against Acics, in 2016.

After the department reversed the 2016 decision, San Diego decided to stick with Acics, Trybus said, either because the university didn’t fit with other organizations or because the process took too long.

The university also considered the accreditor’s reputation, but that wasn’t a big concern, he said. “There are limited options for an institution like ours.”

“Our view is, Who among us is perfect?”

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.