US accreditors plead for political relief as attacks mount

US accreditors are seeking the Biden administration’s help in unifying their approach to partisan attacks on higher education, while growing concerned that they are falling away as a priority in an especially busy policy environment.

The nation’s accreditation system, which typically resides in the background of policy debates, is coming under growing scrutiny at both the state and federal level as conservatives attacking higher education increasingly recognise its power.

That’s causing splits within the accreditation community, with some choosing to fight partisan onslaughts directly and others questioning if the benefit is worth the risk and harm.

“It's a significant challenge,” said Jan Friis, senior vice-president for government affairs at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the chief US lobby group on accreditation. “And each accreditor has to face that in each state in which they operate based on the legislature.”

The two top Republican presidential contenders, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, are among several leading party voices who have promised to break or redirect the control that accreditors hold over universities as a result of their gatekeeping role in making institutions eligible for federal student aid.

That power held by accreditors rarely commands attention outside academia. But one of the six major regional accrediting agencies, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), got noticed by intervening twice in recent years in politically fraught cases in Florida and North Carolina.

In one of those cases, SACS threatened an investigation after the University of Florida – under pressure from Mr DeSantis, the governor – tried to prevent three professors testifying against the state’s position in a court case over voting rights. SACS made a similar move after the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees began overhauling academic curricula without faculty participation. In both cases, the warnings were sufficient to end the political interference without SACS needing to take any formal action.

Another regional accrediting agency, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, took a similar approach in the face of partisan attacks on the president of North Idaho College.

CHEA hasn’t directly encouraged or criticised such interventions. But Mr Friis made clear some unease with SACS implying that an accreditor might cost a major US university its student loan eligibility – set out in Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 – over a single act of political partisanship.

“That’s 40,000 students that couldn’t spend their Title IV money there over three professors, and I think that that would be a little out of place,” Mr Friis said, referencing the Florida case. “I didn’t say it wasn’t worth doing – I said, is it worth pulling the ability of 40,000 students to spend Title IV money over a single incident?”

Belle Wheelan, SACS’ president, said that her intervention never reached the point of University of Florida students losing their federal aid eligibility. “I never threaten an institution’s accreditation,” she said. “I point out that actions they take might put them out or compliance with our standards.”

In other situations, though, CHEA – an association of US colleges and universities focused on accreditation – has encouraged political action. The organisation was early, Mr Friis said, in publicly criticising moves by Florida Republicans including Mr DeSantis to require the state’s public institutions to end their use of SACS as their accreditor.

But assembling unity on such approaches among the nation’s accrediting agencies looms as a tough challenge, Mr Friis said. One option for forming a better consensus, Mr Friis said, would be for the Biden administration to write new regulations on the topic. But while the administration has indicated an intent to pursue new accreditation regulations, CHEA fears the administration is now getting too distracted by other major concerns – such as writing new regulations on student loan forgiveness – to give accreditation the prioritisation it deserves.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com