By some measures, California Lutheran University has become a place where historically underserved students are finding success.
The six-year graduation rate for its Hispanic students, who make up 40 percent of its 2,800 undergraduates, is equal to that of white and Asian American students, at about 75 percent. That sets the university apart from most others: Nationally, about 54 percent of Hispanic students graduate within six years.
Despite that accomplishment, the university received from its accreditor in early 2021 a “notice of concern” finding that it wasn’t truly inclusive. Academic outcomes hadn’t similarly improved for Black students, for whom the six-year graduation rate is 69 percent, according to a report by the WASC Senior College and University Commission, formerly the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the nation’s major institutional accreditors. That group includes accrediting agencies that were previously called “regional” accreditors, because federal regulations defined them by the states where they were allowed to oversee colleges.
Cal Lutheran was also becoming less diverse, the accreditor determined. The university enrolled more Hispanic students and was designated a Hispanic-serving institution in 2016. But its percentage of African American students had remained steady at a little less than 4 percent in recent years, and the share of Asian American and Pacific Islander students had fallen from 6.5 percent to 5.2 percent.
According to WASC, which oversees about 170 colleges primarily in California and Hawaii, the university was also not welcoming for faculty of color, who composed nearly 30 percent of the instructional staff. “Campus climate was repeatedly referred to as toxic,” the accreditation reviewers wrote, “and members of the community painfully described their experiences.”
Most of the DEI standards or guidance are coming from the member institutions, most likely driven by demand from faculty, staff, and students.
Faculty of color were not leaving the university in greater proportions than were white faculty members, but the review found a widespread perception that “the experience of faculty of color and other marginalized members of the faculty is less than ideal,” and a “belief that faculty of color are overextended because of spoken and unspoken expectations to mentor and support the increased number of students of color.”
The review came at a difficult time, said Lori E. Varlotta, who took office as president of Cal Lutheran just weeks before the accreditation team visited. Amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, the university also was dealing with the impact, less than a year earlier, of two videos, one of students in blackface and another of a student using a racially offensive term.
The videos, which appeared in social-media posts, were not cited by the accreditor, but the notice of concern meant the university was in danger of failing its standard for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The scrutiny of Cal Lutheran, which lasted more than two years and ended in March, when the notice was lifted, is one example of a major shift in how accreditors are now holding colleges accountable. Today, six out of the seven major institutional accreditors are developing ways to assess how colleges serve historically underrepresented students, by examining institutions’ mission statements, the disparate outcomes between white students and students of color, the diversity of their faculties, and testimonies of community members about discrimination they face at the colleges.
Adding measures for diversity, equity, and inclusion means that policies and practices at colleges must be “more than just saying the words,” said Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a nonprofit organization that evaluates accreditors. The shift toward greater scrutiny, she said, is “about providing evidence that you are doing it right.”
Two other institutions have received notices of concern from the Western accrediting commission, and another is on “warning,” over DEI efforts. The Higher Learning Commission, which accredits more than 900 institutions in 19 states across the middle of the nation, also has put two colleges on probation over concerns about how they serve marginalized students.
The move by accreditors to require more-specific attention to and evidence of DEI is not without its challenges. The standards are broad, and their interpretation relies heavily on the judgment of peer reviewers. Efforts to meet an accreditor’s concerns can be costly for colleges, especially for those that already enroll many traditionally underserved students. Accreditors and colleges alike also face a political backlash from some conservative politicians, who regard DEI policies and practices as a Trojan horse for progressive indoctrination.
Cal Lutheran has responded to the accreditor’s review, Varlotta said, by taking numerous steps to craft a more inclusive environment for faculty and students of color, including hiring a cabinet-level vice president to manage both human resources and diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice policies and programs, which it calls “DEIJ.” The university has also changed its curriculum and its promotion and tenure processes to ensure all faculty members are committed to DEIJ.
“This was not a ‘We are doing this because WASC says we have to,’” Varlotta said. “We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do and it’s mission-driven.”
Accreditors are slowly wading into this territory after decades of data showing a persistent gap in college-completion rates between Black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers.
The six-year college-graduation rate for first-time, full-time students is 60 percent over all. But that figure masks wide disparities. The graduation rate for Asian students is 74 percent, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, and 64 percent for white students. For Black students, the figure is 40 percent, and for Hispanic students it’s 54 percent.
Accreditors and colleges have long had an interest in serving marginalized students, said Jackson-Hammond. “But the intentionality was not required.”
Recruiting and retaining a diverse student body will become an enrollment imperative for most colleges over the next decade, as the overall number of high-school graduates falls, especially in the Northeast and upper Midwest, where the population is predominantly white. The country’s population is expected to be mostly of people of color by 2044, and many colleges that now enroll mostly white students will have to figure out how to recruit and retain students of color in order to stay in business.
Accreditors see their application of DEI standards as an extension of efforts to improve student outcomes. “We’re talking about equitable success for everyone,” said Jamienne S. Studley, president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission, adding that all achievement gaps are a concern for accreditors. Depending on the institution, she said, colleges may need to focus on equitable outcomes based on gender or status as a veteran or transfer or part-time student.
The 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, was another catalyst for action by the Western commission. “What does the death of George Floyd have to do with what we do? Everything,” the agency said just days after Floyd’s death. Spurred by that event, the accreditor established an Equity and Inclusion Council to make those issues central to everything it does.
The Higher Learning Commission cites the Covid-19 pandemic as an event that “laid bare the inequities existing in and endemic to higher education.” The commission’s current strategic plan emphasizes “the importance of all students having equitable access to higher education.”
According to Anthony Brown, chief diversity officer at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, the biggest reason accreditors are taking an interest in DEI is that their member colleges are demanding it. “At this point,” he said, “most of the DEI standards or guidance are coming from the member institutions, most likely driven by demand from faculty, staff, and students.” In addition to leading DEI efforts at Brooklyn College, Brown has been working with an informal group of scholars who are studying what colleges are doing to improve DEI and how effective those efforts are.
Until recently, accreditors’ measures to support diversity and improve outcomes for underserved students developed slowly. The Western commission first issued a statement on diversity in 1994, according to its records. The statement was incorporated into a handbook for colleges in 2001, with an update in 2017.
On things like academic outcomes, accreditors have been reluctant to set concrete, meaningful standards, so of course they are not moving the needle.
The Western commission’s current standards, adopted in 2013, have just one reference to DEI: “Consistent with its purposes and character, the institution demonstrates appropriate attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion through its policies, its educational and co-curricular programs, its hiring and admissions criteria, and its administrative and organizational practices.”
In November 2022 the Western commission adopted its latest requirements for members to incorporate principles of DEI by making clear that they should be a core part of a college’s mission and integrity, the first of four broad standards that a college must meet during the accreditation process. Under that standard, a college “promotes the success of all students and makes explicit its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Attention to DEI is also required under the three remaining standards, which address student success, finances and organizational structure, and quality assurance. The newest requirements won’t take effect until the fall of 2024.
Five other major institutional accrediting agencies have also formulated policies and standards on DEI, with a wide variation in their approaches.
The Higher Learning Commission requires colleges to foster DEI under standards for both institutional mission and teaching and learning: “The institution’s processes and activities demonstrate inclusive and equitable treatment of diverse populations.”
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits nearly 500 colleges mostly in the mid-Atlantic region, has required members only to nurture “a climate that fosters respect among students, faculty, staff, and administration from a range of diverse backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives.”
Recently approved revisions of its standards include a new “guiding principle” that requires colleges to “reflect deeply and share results on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the context of their mission,” and to add DEI to the new criteria for all of the standards, which focus on areas such as ethics and integrity, student learning, and governance.
The changes reflect how member colleges are already furthering DEI on their own campuses, said Heather F. Perfetti, president of the Middle States commission.
The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, which accredits 132 community colleges mostly in California and Hawaii, includes the term “equity” under its 2014 standards for mission and academic quality as well as student learning, requiring members to “reflect the diverse and changing needs of its students, in support of equity in success for all students.”
Diversity and equity must also be considered in human resources, according to the commission’s standards: “The institution regularly assesses its record in employment equity and diversity consistent with its mission.”
Our institutions don’t have a problem with DEI. It’s these external entities that are coming around, mucking things up.
In 2021 the commission approved a policy on “social justice” that commits it and its members to “a mission-based higher-education model that assures equity, educational opportunity, and success for all students by upholding standards that require member institutions to address historical inequities.”
The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, with 155 members from seven states in the Mountain and Pacific Northwest, doesn’t use the term “diversity” at all in its new standards, which took effect at the beginning of the year. Instead, the commission calls on its members to “focus on equity and closure of achievement gaps.”
Under the new standards, colleges should measure academic outcomes “disaggregated by race, ethnicity, age, gender, socioeconomic status, first-generation college student, and any other institutionally meaningful categories that may help promote student achievement and close barriers to academic excellence and success (equity gaps).”
“It’s all about student success,” said Sonny Ramaswamy, president of the Northwest commission.
Accrediting agencies are sometimes thought of as higher education’s Wizard of Oz: mysterious figures operating behind a curtain of secrecy.
The organizations, which are private and nonprofit, wield power as gatekeepers of federal student aid, such as Pell Grants for low-income students. Colleges must be accredited by an agency that is approved by the U.S. Department of Education in order to receive such aid.
The process can be quite opaque — only the Western commission makes some of its reports on colleges available to the public. But behind the curtain, there is no all-powerful wizard.
Accreditation standards are set by representatives of member colleges, typically through a lengthy deliberative process and a vote by the membership. Decisions on interpreting those standards, approving or penalizing colleges, and whether to intervene when a complaint is made are made by an executive board of officials mostly elected by member colleges.
Thousands of faculty members and administrators do most of the actual work of accreditation, by serving as peer reviewers to evaluate other colleges when they apply to be newly accredited or to renew their accreditation, which happens every four to 10 years, depending on the accrediting agency.
If a college falls short of a standard, the peer reviewers identify the policies and outcomes they believe are causing a problem and provide guidance on best practices to resolve it. But they try not to be too prescriptive. And the amount of guidance given to colleges varies considerably from agency to agency.
In its March 2021 letter to Cal Lutheran, for example, the Western commission required the university to address several areas, such as increased diversity of senior leaders, “recruiting, supporting, mentoring, advising, and retaining faculty of color,” “efforts to implement culturally sensitive pedagogical practices,” and “policies and processes that hold individuals on campus accountable for inappropriate behavior.”
To help the university respond, the accreditor provided a brief Equity and Inclusion Guide, with suggestions for how Cal Lutheran should think about its DEI efforts: “How does the institution define and measure diversity of students, faculty, and staff?” ”What evidence does the institution have that it is achieving equitable outcomes?” And “what initiatives are in place to diversify the board and executive leadership?”
The Western commission also hosts numerous workshops on topics such as DEI, to discuss with members the accreditation process and to train peer reviewers in how to assess colleges. At its coming annual conference, for example, attendees can join a discussion to “take stock of the current landscape and plan better for a future that powerfully integrates diversity, equity, and inclusion into the fabric of our existence as educators, educational institutions, and in our educational practice.”
Along with its new standards, the Northwest commission hosts workshops and webinars on DEI and offers dozens of white papers on a variety of topics — Black-student success, equity and equity mindedness, antiracism resources — as well as links to other organizations that are engaged in those issues, such as the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, and the Education Trust.
But critics and even some supporters of the accreditation process are asking whether the agencies can play an effective role in eradicating disparities in student outcomes.
Some higher-education experts have long questioned whether the standards are too broad and give too much latitude to the reviewers and board members who make the final decisions. A common frustration among accreditation-reform advocates, for example, is that colleges with persistently low academic outcomes are rarely penalized. Even with standards in place, the agencies often take years to issue sanctions, and years more may pass before a college resolves shortcomings, if at all.
“On things like academic outcomes, accreditors have been reluctant to set concrete, meaningful standards, so of course they are not moving the needle,” said Edward Conroy, a senior adviser on education policy at New America.
For colleges, the costs of supporting a diverse student body can also be a real barrier, said Tammie Cumming, associate provost and assistant vice president for institutional effectiveness at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, and the founder of a group of scholars, called Next Generation Assessment, that is studying the impact of colleges’ DEI efforts. “Many of the institutions that serve the most diverse student bodies are the most resource-challenged and also the most likely to already be doing the work required for the DEI standards,” Cumming wrote in an email.
Black and Hispanic students make up a plurality or a majority of the enrollment at five of the six colleges now under scrutiny by the Western commission and Higher Learning Commission, according to federal data.
Accreditors are also facing resistance from political conservatives who think the agencies are exceeding their authority and putting progressive ideology ahead of concern for student outcomes.
Accreditation standards that require support for DEI stifle academic freedom and penalize scholars who do not support what they see as a purely sociopolitical movement, said John D. Sailer, a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars.
Sailer and others are most alarmed by the increasing use of diversity statements in faculty hiring and promotion, and mandatory employee training that seeks to root out implicit bias against people of color. Both practices are viewed skeptically by some academics as attempts to enforce a political viewpoint and a threat to academic freedom. There are also questions about the effectiveness of such measures in actually changing discriminatory behavior.
The terms “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” on their face, sound like laudable goals, Sailer said, but the result of infusing them into campus employment practices is that faculty members can be punished for saying they want to treat all of their students alike.
Standards on DEI could also put accreditors on a collision course with Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states who are considering legislation to bar public-college spending on measures to close racial disparities.
“The political backlash has already come,” said Barbara Gellman-Danley, president of the Higher Learning Commission. Legislators are “voicing concerns, sometimes in a positive way and sometimes in a more suppressive way,” she said.
What is not yet clear is whether accreditors would seek to enforce a standard that conflicts with state law.
“Anything is possible,” Gellman-Danley said. “I’m not going to come out in The Chronicle and take a stand on this.”
Fear of a political backlash has prevented one accrediting agency from imposing any DEI requirements.
“We don’t have a standard on DEI because of political concerns,” Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, said at an accreditation conference in January. “Our institutions don’t have a problem with DEI,” she said. “It’s these external entities that are coming around, mucking things up.”
The Southern association accredits more than 750 colleges across 11 states. Republicans have complete control of state government in seven of those states, and both legislative chambers in three others. The group includes Florida, “where ‘woke’ goes to die,” according to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and the epicenter of efforts to undo DEI in higher education.
The association, which now accredits all of Florida’s 28 public colleges and 12 public universities, has already been the target of the state’s lawmakers, who passed a law in 2022 requiring all of those institutions to seek a new accreditor over the next decade. The law was ostensibly a reaction to the accreditor’s inquiries about political interference and conflicts of interest at Florida State University and the University of Florida.
The Florida law and a bill pending in Texas raise the stakes for accreditors by allowing colleges to sue the agency if it took “retaliatory action,” such as by dropping a college’s accreditation.
Rebecca S. Maloney, chair of the Southern association’s board, said the accreditor’s standards do require member colleges to disaggregate student-achievement data and show how they are closing achievement gaps. “Just because we don’t have a standard, we are not ignoring it,” said Maloney, who is also academic dean and director of institutional effectiveness at the Notre Dame Seminary Graduate School of Theology, in New Orleans.
The accreditor also has a position statement that says it “supports and encourages the leadership role of its institutions in promoting and sustaining diversity, equity, and inclusion in all arenas of higher education.”
In June the assocation’s board will vote on a proposed revision of the standards that would require members to demonstrate their commitment to the position statement in three areas, Maloney said. “I don’t know how the board will vote,” she added.
The Southern association could also face pressure from within higher education. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, which represents some 3,000 accredited colleges, has added DEI requirements to its own recognition standards — a sort of accrediting process for the accreditors.
The council’s new DEI standards won’t affect the Southern association until it has to apply for recognition again in five years, said Wheelan, at which point she plans to have retired.
Jackson-Hammond, the council’s president, said the standard “is about manifesting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organization,” which may or may not ask an accreditor to set a DEI standard for its own members.
In March, two years after the Western commission issued its notice of concern to Cal Lutheran, the accreditor removed that notice.
The Western commission praised the university, located about 40 miles west of Los Angeles, for having a campuswide plan for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, finding ways to incorporate those ideals into the curriculum, and developing processes to deal with inappropriate conduct.
Cal Lutheran, one of 26 institutions affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, also established a new division of “Talent, Culture, and Diversity” led by a new, cabinet-level vice president who manages both human resources and DEIJ policies and programs.
Several other new positions were created to support DEIJ efforts across the university, such as staff members to manage the university’s interaction with employees and to train employees in policies and practices. In addition, the hiring process was overhauled to make candidate pools more diverse and to train hiring committees on implicit bias.
“In this work you have to look at structures and policies — that’s what moves the needle, not programs,” said Cristallea K. Buchanan, vice president for talent, culture, and diversity. “Cultural potlucks don’t change people’s biases.”
Buchanan, who was previously head of inclusion and diversity at American Honda, said the university had given her the clout to make real change. “I took this job because it’s cabinet-level,” she said. “Many of my colleagues across the country don’t have the authority they need to do their jobs.”
The university is also making deep changes in its curriculum and its promotion and tenure processes. A new department of race and ethnic studies was created, as was a new associate deanship to lead it.
Beginning in 2016, Cal Lutheran overhauled its faculty-hiring process to ensure both diversity and equity. A specially trained faculty member is assigned to each faculty search to make sure the process is equitable, according to the university’s spokesperson. Faculty searches also must have candidate pools that reflect the diversity of Ph.D. recipients in the given field over the last three years.
In addition, all faculty members have to demonstrate their commitment to DEIJ in teaching, scholarship, or service, both to receive tenure and in post-tenure reviews, said Michael D. Hart, chair of the Faculty Senate and head of the music department.
Tenured faculty members who don’t meet expectations in a post-tenure review, Hart said, will have to develop an improvement plan with their supervisors. “It’s academia, we’re here to have tough conversations,” he said.
The process has not always gone smoothly.
“I was in the job six months before I was made aware of the [accreditation] notice,” Buchanan said. “Wouldn’t you give me this on Day 1 as my marching orders?” she said. “Thank goodness our work was already moving forward.”
Jerry Tovar, a senior at Cal Lutheran who is Hispanic and a member of the student government, said he was aware of the accreditation issue and thinks the university is “trying harder” to create a more inclusive climate.
But he is frustrated that progress has been halting. In late January, Tovar said, an instructor used an inappropriate racial term in class and then sent a note to the class to play down the incident. Tovar said he and other students thought the instructor was talking about how people from the former Soviet Union were once called a racially derogatory word also used for African Americans.
Later, the instructor, Francois Zdanowicz, who teaches courses on international politics, wrote to his political-science students: “It has come to my attention that some students believed I used an [sic] offensive language during last Thursday’s class.”
After the department chair got involved, Tovar said, Zdanowicz wrote a second note to his class: “After much reflection, I completely understand why and how the words I used in last Thursday’s class were harmful and offensive.”
“How,” Tovar wondered, “am I supposed to learn from someone who does this?”
Zdanowicz referred questions to the university’s communications office.
The accreditor too has its eye on Cal Lutheran. Among other things, it is requiring the university to continue evaluating all the new programs and curricular changes to see if they are having an effect, and dealing with a “large number” of open positions and the “challenges of faculty and staff retention,” the accreditor wrote in its March letter.”
The university must also “address campus climate, including issues relating to trust in senior leadership, staff and faculty morale, burnout, and equity,” the accreditor wrote.
Incidents like the one involving Zdanowicz are bound to happen at many institutions, Varlotta said, but the important thing is that Cal Lutheran now responds in an appropriate way.
The university has shown it is on the right track, Varlotta said, with two-thirds of new faculty hires in recent years being persons of color. But she acknowledged Cal Lutheran still has work to do, in particular to improve the graduation rate for Black undergraduates, which hasn’t changed since the accreditor’s notice of concern.
“We take 10 steps forward,” she said, ”and do we have a couple steps back every now and then? Yes.”
Next year, the university will start the accreditation cycle all over.
