What’s New
The agency that accredits many colleges in the South had been poised this week to vote on creating a new standard requiring member colleges to demonstrate how they are supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
But on Tuesday, delegates at the annual meeting of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges didn’t take up the matter after all.
A mandate to commit to DEI could have conflicted with state laws in Florida and Texas barring spending on diversity programs. The nation’s six other major accreditors have adopted DEI standards for their institutions.
The Details
Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, known as SACS, said several institutions were disappointed the organization had only an optional position statement about the importance of diversity, rather than a standard that would apply to all members.
Although Wheelan had said delegates might make a motion to create a new standard, none of the college presidents or association board members stood to discuss the issue when they voted Tuesday in Orlando, Fla., to approve minor changes to the standards.
“You can’t predict what’s going to happen during a live meeting,” Wheelan said after the conference, where the theme was “Imagine New Paths Forward: Building Stronger Community Networks through Curiosity and Visualization.”
Some presidents in attendance said they would continue to push for student success even though the accreditor doesn’t require a commitment to diversity. Several of the conference’s sessions focused on ways to support diverse groups of students.
“I feel comfortable saying that most higher-education professionals are going to keep doing this work,” Adam Hutchinson, president of Virginia Highlands Community College, in Virginia, said before the closing session of the meeting.
But after that meeting on Tuesday, several presidents declined to discuss the possibility of a DEI standard.
Others said they were fine with the association’s current position statement, which makes DEI optional. “I don’t endorse or disagree with it,” said Joe Whitmore, president of Snead State Community College, in Alabama. “I support the organization,” he said.
The Backdrop
John K. Pierre, chancellor of the Southern University Law Center, said that sticking with the status quo was most likely a reaction to the political climate in the 11 states where the association accredits colleges.
Forty anti-DEI bills were introduced across the country in 2023, according to The Chronicle‘s DEI Legislation Tracker. Seven have been signed into law so far; many proposals could resurface during next year’s legislative sessions.
Just before Tuesday’s Southern Association of Colleges and Schools meeting, three Republican state senators in Kentucky called on the delegates to vote against the possible DEI standard.
“The DEI movement across our college campuses is often not the force that ensures an inclusive environment or holds accountable those who discriminate in higher ed,” the lawmakers’ statement said, “but often fosters the exact opposite of what its acronym stands for.”
Lawmakers in Florida and North Carolina have also passed laws requiring their states’ public colleges to find accreditation from an agency other than the Southern Association within a decade.
Wheelan told attendees the association is working to prevent similar laws in other states and asked college presidents for their help in advocating for the accreditor.
The Stakes
While the presidents and their colleges may be spared from the political backlash that would accompany an accreditation standard mandating DEI, staff and faculty members who are working to ensure all their students succeed are caught in a difficult position.
In a session on how to discuss data from student outcomes, administrators from Houston Community College stressed that how they do their jobs will change on January 1, when Texas’ ban on diversity programs takes effect.
“For those of us in Texas, Florida, and some other states, it’s a little more complicated than in the past,” said Melissa Miller-Waters, director of accreditation, evaluation, and planning at Houston, which enrolls more than 38,000 undergraduates.
In Texas and some other states that now ban DEI policies and practices, the law creates an exception for activities that are required by accreditation.
Under the new law, the college will still be able to disaggregate data for different kinds of students, which is also required by the accreditor, Miller-Waters said. But how those data are presented even among college staff and faculty members will have to change, she said.
As at many other public colleges in the Lone Star State, Houston Community College’s lawyers have advised staff members on not only the policies and practices they should follow, but also on the language they use to describe those measures.
There are consequences for violating the law, the Houston staff members said during the session, including being fired for doing anything to promote DEI.
The problem, said Miller-Waters and her colleagues, is that although the law has changed, the kinds of students they serve and the supports that help them complete their programs will not.
If Black and Hispanic students who are struggling don’t finish their degrees, it affects more than just the college’s graduation rates, said Andrea Burridge, Houston’s associate vice chancellor for research, analytics, and decision support.
“If we fail in our mission,” Burridge said, “we fail the greater Houston community.”
