Right now due to the leadership of Betsy DeVos the whole process of school accreditation is up in the air. Accreditation is important to schools because it shows that the programs and courses it offers provides enough rigor and detail to be worth the money students spend on it and help them get jobs. There are two primary types of accreditation. National accreditation is for technical colleges/programs and special industry related programs. Regional accreditation is then all of your normal community colleges, colleges, and universities. Regional accreditation has always been held as a higher form of accreditation because it supports traditional education and not just tech or occupational focus. Most standard schools with regional accreditation require students to take some form of general education whereas the national accreditation allows students to jump directly into program specific classes with little regard for general education. General education are classes like English, math, social sciences and the like. These courses help students build strong foundations, reasoning abilities, and can prove of help to a diversity of different jobs. This last one is very important because not everyone (if not most people) goes into a field of work directly related to their degree. This is true for both colleges and tech schools. The whole point of getting a degree/certificate is to get a better job and most jobs needs a diversity of skills. According to the Department of Education: “The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions and/or programs of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting agencies, which are private educational associations of regional or national scope, develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met. Institutions and/or programs that request an agency’s evaluation and that meet an agency’s criteria are then ‘accredited’ by that agency” (DAPIP).
Now the U.S Department of Education has changed things up with the supposed purpose of improving things. The changes were to go into effect July 1, 2020. These changes ignores issues like reduced oversight of online schools (and they really need it, I know because I have worked for a few of them), more schools can become predatory towards students, and it devalues traditional education. Supposedly these changes were negotiated, but with the current leadership in the Department of education that negotiation is laughable at best. So let’s take a more detailed look. Some of the things this includes is loosening accreditor compliance standards, easing the path for some new accreditors to become recognized, and giving accreditors more leeway over sanctions (Schwartz). Anyone else scared yet? These changes also allows accrediting agencies to do ‘substantial compliance’ instead of previously where they had to meet full compliance (National Law Review, The). This now means that these accreditors can let things slip and slide and not be held fully accountable. This could also open loop holes for diploma mills to look legitimate when an education from them is not worth the paper their diploma is printed on.
So what does this mean overall? Accreditation is now weakened so much it basically means nothing. Now both other schools and the work force cannot have confidence in the quality of education that a person has received. This will negatively impact how credits transfer between schools and employers may not hire people if they feel that the quality of their education is in question. There is only one agency that really watches what accreditors do and that is the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. With these changes it will be even harder for them to keep up any standards with the accreditors. Michael Itzkowitz made a good point when he said, “The change in regulations will allow institutions with fully online programs … to evade state laws even where they’re enrolling and harming students” (Schwartz). Even though there were a lot of concerns raised about this from both the public and professionals in the field, the Department of Education went forward and made no changes to reflect these concerns (Bidwell). According to the Department of Educations website, “the Department provides oversight over the postsecondary accreditation system through its review of all federally-recognized accrediting agencies. The Department holds accrediting agencies accountable by ensuring that they enforce their accreditation standards effectively”. So how does these changes help to hold accrediting bodies responsible? It doesn’t. It gives them more room to make a mess of everything. But here’s the funny part: “Please note, the Secretary's recognition of accrediting agencies is limited by statute to accreditation activities within the United States. Although many recognized agencies carry out accrediting activities outside the United States, these actions are not within the legal authority of the Department of Education to recognize, are not reviewed by the Department, and the Department does not exercise any oversight over them” (DAPIP). Wait… did they just admit that they have no power over this process… yes they did. So this means that they can release and write anything they want and it means nothing. This whole thing is just laughable because everyone is going to try and take this seriously when the Department of Education admitted that this is outside of their real power.
Why is this important to Colorado?
Growing up and even attending school in my early college
days, I had no idea about accreditation or that it even existed. I thought all
schools were created the same. I never understood that one of the reasons my
mother had a hard time finding work was that it was because her industry
specific certificate had come from a local tech school, national accredited,
and not from a college. Students dump money into these programs and many times
the nationally accredited school will not disclose to students that their
credits may not transfer into other schools. In Colorado steps have been taken
to try and help students with this. Some nationally accredited and ‘other’
schools have set up articulation agreements with regionally accredited schools.
There is still a problem with this. Those credits are only good at that one
school that said they would accept them. If the student goes to another school
both instate or out of state those credits will not transfer the same as
credits from the regionally accredited school.
Works Cited
Bidwell, Allie. “Department of Education Releases Final Regulations on Accreditation, State Authorization.” NASFAA, November 1, 2019. https://www.nasfaa.org/news-item/19926/Department_of_Education_Releases_Final_Regulations_on_Accreditation_State_Authorization
Przypyszny, John, and Cindy Irani. “U.S. Department of Education Issues Final Rule to Revise Accreditation and State Authorization Regulations.” The National Law Review vol. X no. 246, September 2, 2020. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-education-issues-final-rule-to-revise-accreditation-and-state
Schwartz, Natalie. “Ed Department Issues Final Rules on Accreditation and State Authorization.” Education Dive, October 31, 2019. https://www.educationdive.com/news/ed-dept-issues-final-rules-on-accreditation-and-state-authorization/566386/
“Role of the U.S. Department of Education in Postsecondary Accreditation.” DAPIP. U.S. Department of Education. Accessed September 2, 2020. https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/home
For more on accreditation from the Department of Education:
https://www2.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/index.html?src=more
https://www2.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation.html#Overview
https://www2.ed.gov/students/prep/college/diplomamills/index.html
https://www2.ed.gov/students/prep/college/diplomamills/accreditation.html
General information on accreditation:
https://www.online.drexel.edu/news/national-vs-regional-accreditation.aspx
https://www.edsmart.org/regional-vs-national-accreditation/
https://thebestschools.org/resources/national-accreditation-guide/
https://www.geteducated.com/regional-vs-national-accreditation-which-is-better-for-online-colleges/
This one I like because it tells people straight out that even employers may
not pay for classes at nationally accredited schools in their tuition plans
because the educational quality is seen as less than that of regionally accredited
schools.
Congress on changes:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5768/text
For more on the ‘non-official’ side that talks about the impact of
these changes:
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