By Sheldon

The title of this post is not meant as a rhetorical or even an ironic question. The accreditation process that ensures the quality of schools, colleges, and universities is a vital part of our educational system. As someone who has not only taken a school through the accreditation process, but worked as an inspector on the other side, I know first-hand the rigorous requirements a school has to meet in order to receive accreditation. It’s usually a years-long process, and some never do make the cut. I have worked with accreditors who are a credit to their craft, and seen others worthy of the worst bureaucratic characters in a Douglas Adams novel.

These Accreditors, who hold the fortunes of thousands of colleges and universities in their hands, are not government agencies. They are private organizations who must themselves pass muster with the government every few years to make sure they are upholding standards and enforcing the rules. Schools who don’t toe the line lose their accreditation, which is basically a death sentence unless they get their act together. This is a good thing. Most of the rules are there for very good reasons, and when the rules clash with the overall purpose of a university, usually (but not always) the accreditors will work with you to meet your objectives within the bounds of the rules.

This takes us to Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, a major accreditation body that accredits a lot of for-profit schools. Over the last couple of years, a growing crescendo of reports have arisen from many of their schools describing shady recruiting practices,  The debacle surrounding Trump University and the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges chain are some of the more visible examples, but there are quite a few others. (Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of Henley-Putnam University, a for-profit school that retains an excellent record and reputation in its dealings with students.)

It seems, however, that ACICS has looked the other way while many of its schools have misbehaved, badly. I am on an ACICS mailing list, and received the following announcement yesterday:

Today, September 22, 2016, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (“ACICS”) received notice that the Senior Department Official at the Department of Education has accepted the recommendation of the Department staff and the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (“NACIQI”) to deny renewal of recognition to the Council.

So much so that the Feds are shutting them down. That means that 800 schools and over 800,000 students just had their institutional accreditation yanked out from under them. For now, ACICS continues to operate while it appeals the decision. It is unlikely that the students will be left high and dry, since one of the iron-clad requirements of accreditation is that an institution retain enough cash reserves to allow every student to finish their programs (“teach out”) should the institution have to close its doors. Unless, of course, ACICS let institutions slide on that rule as well.

This may sound like a boring bit of bureaucratic silliness, but this is a very, very big deal. At issue is the future of American universities and how they will be governed and regulated. For one thing, accreditation is a key component of Federal funding for universities; accreditation is a sine qua non for many sources of funding that keep universities functioning. Combine that with the increasing difficulty of paying for college without hocking a spare kidney, and the added criticisms that they have turned into little more than career training centers, and it is clear that a major shake-up is in the works.

In my opinion, the shake-up is long overdue. Although there are a few for-profit colleges that have done well by their students, I myself am disenthralled from the for-profit model of higher education, even though for years it was seen as inevitable. This latest business with ACICS will, I hope, prompt some careful reconsideration. It may also push accreditation bodies into the role of consumer protection agents, a role they already serve to some degree. Most state agencies that approve postsecondary institutions (state approval is separate from accreditation) are already part of the state’s office of consumer affairs, not the office of education. This means that less emphasis falls on intellectual rigor and the quality of the programs; so long as the program is what it is advertised to be, there’s no problem. That said, if you let the market exercise full sway over your course offerings, that’s a problem. When it comes to dictating intellectual quality, the market is pretty awful.

This unfolding drama deserves close watching. We live in a time of rampant anti-intellectualism while at the same time drowning in data and heaps of educational content available for free. It’s a time of paradox. How that paradox resolves itself will have considerable influence on our future.