The national accrediting agency that gave the seal of approval making dozens of Ohio colleges eligible for federal student-aid money may soon lose its authorization to do so.
If that happens, all of those schools will have 18 months to win accreditation from a different agency or their students will be shut off from federal grants and loans.
Nationwide, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools accredits more than 900 schools.
According to the ACICS, some of the Ohio schools it accredits include American National University, the Bradford School, Daymar College, Harrison College, Hondros College of Business, ITT Technical Institute, Miami-Jacobs Career College and Ohio Business College.
Wiping out accreditation for all of them “could be quite a mess,” said John Ware, executive director of the Ohio Board of Career Colleges and Schools, which oversees for-profit colleges. “I’m not sure the other accreditors can absorb that many schools in that short an amount of time.”
ACICS goes before a federally appointed panel next week seeking renewal of its status as a gatekeeper for federal aid. The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday recommended that it not be reauthorized; the panel will accept or reject that recommendation and a senior official with the education department eventually will make the final ruling.
ACICS has been under fire from politicians and higher-education advocates for being too lax in granting accreditation, including to many schools under federal and state investigation for wrongdoing.
Harrison College, a privately held, Indiana-based chain of schools, says students shouldn’t panic. “We have a backup plan in place,” said Michael Crowley, chief compliance officer and general counsel for Harrison. “Fortunately, we’ve enjoyed a pretty good compliance record. I don’t expect any trouble getting re-accredited.”
All students at for-profit colleges, especially those who just started their programs, should find out if their schools are accredited by ACICS and, if so, whether they have a backup plan, according to a Wednesday post on the official blog of the federal education department.
Critics have noted that students from ACICS-accredited schools have relatively high rates of debt, and that too few graduates of those schools find jobs that pay well enough for them to pay off their debt. They also maintain that members of the accreditation panel are too closely linked to executives at the schools on which they are supposed to pass judgment.
Ben Miller of the Center for American Progress, which has been a persistent critic of for-profit colleges and accrediting agencies, ACICS in particular, said such agencies have faced no consequences for lax oversight. “They have no reason to care if they consistently get it wrong,” Miller said.
To solve the problem, he said, either accrediting agencies must be liable for some of the taxpayer-funded loans they enable, or the Department of Education should take over accreditation. “It may be that this whole outsourcing of decisions that affect the flow of billions of federal dollars is super-weird and we shouldn’t do that.”
