University systems in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are launching a new accreditor, dubbed the Commission for Public Higher Education.
Why are accreditors important?
Accreditors are semi-private organizations that function as gatekeepers for federal financial aid. Only students at colleges that have accreditor approval can receive Pell Grants, student loans, and other types of aid. This gives accreditors immense power over colleges.
Are new accreditors needed?
Yes. Accreditation suffers from a host of serious issues.
Since I recently detailed these at some length (see “Accreditation Protects the Status Quo—It’s Time for Drastic Reform” or this full-length discussion), I’ll just summarize the core problems here: Accreditors fail to ensure college quality and face an inherent conflict in trying to act as both regulators and consultants. They often abuse their power, operating more like a cartel than a neutral evaluator. And the system as a whole discourages innovation by focusing on inputs and processes rather than actual outcomes.
But, unfortunately, the most commonly discussed replacements for accreditation—a federal government takeover or a completely laissez-faire approach—would likely be worse. So, our best bet is to try to improve accreditation. There are numerous ways to do this (see the seven listed here if you’re curious), one of which is to increase competition among accreditors.
[RELATED: Is Accreditation a Scam? The System Fueling Ideology in Higher Ed]
Historically, a handful of accreditors were granted regional monopolies, where all universities in their region were required to use a single accreditor. The first Trump administration ended the regional monopolies, but we haven’t seen much change yet, in part because accreditation typically lasts around ten years and in part because no new accreditors have been approved yet. The Commission for Public Higher Education joins a handful of other aspiring accreditors seeking to change that. The main difference is that this commission will be a joint effort among six states, whereas the others are completely private entities.
A state becoming an accreditor isn’t exactly common, but it has happened before. Examples include the Oklahoma Board of Career and Technology Education, the Puerto Rico State Agency for the Approval of Public Postsecondary Vocational, Technical Institutions and Programs, and the Pennsylvania State Board of Career and Technical Education, Bureau of Career and Technical Education.
But there has never been a multi-state accreditor like this.
Will it work?
Who knows? It takes years to become a new accreditor and years more to determine if it is doing a good job.
My tribe—libertarians—is generally skeptical of most government initiatives. On the other hand, I would have been skeptical of a multi-state initiative to launch a new university that specializes in competency-based education, and yet the offspring of that effort was Western Governors University, which has been wildly successful.
If the Commission for Public Higher Education is even half as successful, it will move accreditation in the right direction.
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Image: “Ron DeSantis” by Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons
“A state becoming an accreditor isn’t exactly common”
Aren’t all states already essentially exercising accreditation authority over the IHEs in their state? Massachusetts has a Board of Higher Education — https://www.mass.edu/about/aboutbhe.asp