Violations of the Code of Federal Regulations

Violations of the Code of Federal Regulations

This paper describes the many abuses of the ACCJC including their violations of the Code of Federal Regulations (34 CFR)). In particular, the ACCJC has been in violation of 34 CFR 602 by not having adequate staff , resources, and time to realistically consider the number of institutions that they review at each meeting; the lack of adequate training of visiting team members; the lack of controlling conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest; the lack of maintenance of complete and accurate records including the destruction of important documents; the lack of an effective method of consideration by the Commission members; attempting to change the missions of the colleges; the lack of consistency in enforcing standards and determining levels of sanction; the lack of clear standards as illustrated by the variance in sanctions recommended by visiting teams and the eventual sanction levied by the Commission; the lack of clarity to colleges as to the reasons for a sanction being given and what improvements are required; failure to involve all of the college’s relevant constituencies (including the collective bargaining agents) in the campus interviews; failure to take into account comments and complaints before making sanction decisions; failure to respond in a timely and complete manner to third party comments and complaints against the ACCJC; a lack of unbiased judgments regarding complaints against the ACCJC; a lack of due process in their proceedings; a failure to provide reasonable time for colleges to make necessary adjustments; a failure to properly balance the number of faculty and administrators on visiting teams; and timely filing of its decisions. Each of these violations of federal requirements is documented in this paper and are reasons to deny the continued use of ACCJC as an accreditation agency.

WASC

The WASC Corporate Board oversees the work of three Commissions. It is comprised of nine members, three from each Commission, including the chairs from each. The WASC Board meets annually to certify the accrediting actions of the three Commissions, receive audits, and take action on business as necessary. According to a July 25, 2013 letter from the ACCJC to me regarding my complaint: “Prior to July 1, 2013, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges was a corporate body that included three independent accrediting agencies: the ACSCU, the ACCJC, and the ACS, each involved with different types of educational institutions within the Western Region. It was determined during a review commissioned by the WASC board, that it would be more appropriate for each of the accrediting agencies to separately incorporate and to locate the organizational descriptions within each organization's bylaws. This was needed to legally clarify the intended WASC entity role as one of affiliation for the three accreditors. Each of the three accreditors has undertaken the recommended changes.” I am still not sure why a legal clarification was necessary.

The Commission also considered for second reading and then adopted the institutional policies on the review of accreditation standards and on their student and public complaints against institutions. “The revised Policy on Relations with Governmental Agencies provides a description of the consultation undertaken when conflicts between state and local laws and Accreditation Standards are identified.”

Quality Assurance, Continuous Improvement, or Compliance

The accreditation process is supposed to provide assurance to the public that the accredited member colleges meet their standards and that “the education earned at the institutions is of value to the student who earned it; and employers, trade or profession-related licensing agencies, and other colleges and universities can accept a student’s credential as legitimate.” Contrary to this claim, the emphasis of ACCJC has not been on the value of the education to the student or to the colleges and universities that would accept the credits earned. It has been on the management and administration aspects of the college.

To many it seems wrong that a private organization can sanction, and even close, a college for reasons other than for the welfare of the students served. In fact, the issue of the proper role of accreditation agencies is currently under discussion in Washington. In April of 2012, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) released a report making accreditation policy recommendations for the Higher Education Act Reauthorization. The discussion noted that accreditation is meant to assist “individuals in making informed post-secondary educational choices, in consumer protection, and in the continuing improvement of education and the institutions that provide it.” “However, there are both commonalities and divergences among notions of ‘quality assurance,’ ‘continuous improvement,’ and ‘compliance’.” “And there is tension among notions of gate-keeping for student aid eligibility, mechanisms of public accountability, and notions of accreditation as a broader quality improvement and assurance process.”
The NACIQI came down on the side of continuing the current system of accreditation using independent private agencies like the ACCJC. The basic argument was: “With accreditation being a system of self-regulation, the involvement of member institutions in the process of establishing the standards and then applying them in volunteer peer review, accreditors also promote understanding of the expectations and buy-in for the standards and policies.” This is not the way it works in ACCJC accreditations. Member institutions are reluctant to enter the debate for fear of losing accreditation and there is little actual buy-in for the standards and policies of the ACCJC.
The ACCJC sees their requirements as, in the words of the NACIQI, “essential to allow accreditors to evaluate institutional or program quality.” More often, again in the words of the NACIQI, the ACCJC oversight is “unnecessarily intrusive, prescriptive, and granular in ways that may not advance system goals nor match institutional priorities, and is costly in resources such as time, funds, and opportunity.”

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