Again, quoting Carl Friedlander, “ACCJC sanctions colleges with a frequency and ferocity unheard of in any other region of the U.S. (or in the four-year section of WASC). The comparative data is clear and mind-boggling.”
“Meeting and documenting compliance with accreditation standards is not a favorite faculty activity anywhere in American higher education—especially in the brave new world of Student Learning Outcomes (SLO's).
“Faculty across the country may grouse about the work involved in accreditation, but only in the California community colleges do faculty find themselves fantasizing about shifting to a new Commission that can accredit our colleges or even substituting state oversight for ACCJC oversight. We consider these desperate alternatives because the relationship between ACCJC and the California community colleges has become rather toxic.”
“These kinds of behaviors by ACCJC leadership compound the problem of the federal pressures and make many faculty feel that accreditation in California today has almost nothing to do with "peer and professional review" and is instead about ACCJC spearheading an aggressive (and, many believe, misguided) "reform" agenda. Spearheading a "reform" campaign is not the business of an accrediting commission.”
It is sad that the ACCJC has not acted on its understanding of what the colleges have been facing in determining reasonable sanctions. Instead, it has added to the college woes. The colleges have enough to worry about without also being required to exist under the yoke of the ACCJC and its micro-managing sanctions. Something must be done concerning the ACCJC and its abusive posturing - and sooner rather than later.
Although I am not yet convinced that the sanctions and recommendations of the ACCJC and their use of grants from groups that seem more interested in privatizing education than expanding public education indicates that the ACCJC itself has an interest in privatization, many in the community college family are convinced. For example, some believe that “In view of the extraordinarily high number of colleges the ACCJC has sanctioned recently, in comparison to the very low number in the rest of the country, many of us have concluded that ACCJC has exceeded its public-policy scope and authority and the accreditation crisis is part of a larger movement to downsize and privatize community colleges.”
I do believe that a number of college administrators and trustees have attempted to use the club of the Commission to force educational and collective bargaining condition changes that do not advance the quality of the institution or the service to students. Often the changes imposed result in the erosion of community support, laying off of critical faculty and staff, cuts in benefits and pay (and the resulting unfair labor charges), changes in the collegial governance systems, a breakdown of communication between administration and staff, and even a loss in support for the treasured California Master Plan for Higher Education. These actions often negatively affect long established employee working conditions as well as the collegial atmosphere on campus. In short, the current “my way or the highway” attitude of the Commission is helping to change community colleges in California in negative ways.
The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) is the required accreditation agency for the Community Colleges of California. The ACCJC claims that “In achieving and maintaining its accreditation a higher education institution assures the public that the institution meets standards of quality, that the education earned there is of value to the students who earn it, and that employers, trade or professional-related agencies and other colleges and universities can accept a student's credentials as legitimate."
The ACCJC does not address college quality of instruction, but instead the ACCJC has been issuing a barrage of sanctions from WATCH to LOSS OF ACCREDITATION based on the “successful performance” of excessive documentation and data gathering, reviews of policy and procedures, and adherence to education practices favored by the Commission.
Accrediting agencies in the United States are private educational associations of regional or national scope. Without accreditation colleges will not receive state funding and their students will not be eligible for student financial aid. Credits from non-accredited colleges are not accepted by most colleges. So without accreditation, colleges are forced to close.
In a three day meeting in June of 2013, the ACCJC voted in secret to remove accreditation from City College of San Francisco (CCSF) effective July 31, 2014. After the secret votes on sanctions, the Commission held an open limited access hearing at which a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle was denied entrance. The reasons publically given for the CCSF vote were related to college leadership and governance issues, financial administration, and bureaucratic procedures. None of the reasons given had to do with the actual educational quality of the program at CCSF. The action to remove accreditation and force CCSF to close its doors to more than 85,000 students will not be final until the review and appeal processes are completed - a process that is strictly controlled by the ACCJC itself.
From 2003 to 2008 the ACCJC issued 112 of the 126 sanctions nationwide. From June 2011 to June 2012 the ACCJC issued forty-eight of the seventy-five sanctions (64%) issued nationwide. The community colleges in California represent about 19% of the community colleges accredited nationally. In January 2013 the ACCJC continued its assault on California's community colleges when it sanctioned 10 out of 23 (43.4%) colleges and in June of 2013 it sanctioned 10 out of 21 (47.6%) colleges.
CCSF is not the only college not meeting what the ACCJC considers standards as claimed on several occasions by Beno and Brice Harris. The Commission is systematically created chaos.
The hostile attitude of the ACCJC toward the colleges has created a reign of terror in which college personnel are afraid to speak out against the Commission’s attempts to narrow college missions (in contradiction to California’s Master Plan for Higher Education), interfere in local collective bargaining (in contradiction to California law), dictate how locally elected Boards of Trustees are to behave, and change local college governing structures (to be inconsistent with California policy) for fear of reprisals.
In short the ACCJC is a rogue organization that should not be allowed to close a college like CCSF except in the case where a college is not providing quality education at a fair price. The closure of any college is a crime against its community and particularly against those residents that would benefit from community college education. This should not be allowed to happen.
THE ACCJC MUST BE STOPPED FROM CREATING HAVOC.
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