Is Accreditation a Scam? The System Fueling Ideology in Higher Ed

Tremors from the election continue to ripple across the country, and the meltdown among the Democrats rages on. What is undeniable is that there is a real opportunity to make some much-needed reforms now. While the country is spoiled for choice of major institutions that need to be restructured or even eliminated, it’s time to start talking about where to start first and what that might look like.

On top of the list would be excising some of the deepest social justice ideology roots embedded in places where they do not belong, which is anywhere this is being taught as something other than an unprovable divisive theory.

This quickly draws attention to the universities where Social Justice ideology was incubated, born, and then unleashed worldwide. Suspiciously, that ideology came to dominate not just one or a handful of universities but nearly all. It makes you wish there had been something in place that would have corrected bigoted lies being taught to our future leaders, like accreditation.

If you, too, have been sold the bill of goods that accreditation guarantees some level of educational quality, I regret to inform you that for some time now, it has been doing just the opposite.

At least as far back as 2002, scholars and observers have been raising concerns that accreditation has not been living up to its promise. Despite those stark warnings, here we are over 20 years later after the failure has become so spectacular that conversation about reform is finally starting to get real.

But before we get into those details, let’s first take a look at exactly what we are talking about.

What is Accreditation?

Accreditation began as a way for university professors from one school to visit another and share tips and suggestions that might make the school better, in a sort of gentlemanly sharing of expertise. Over time, it was formalized, but still, a voluntary affair engaged to boost educational rigor and school status. This changed after the Korean War.

When new G.I.s came back with their G.I. bills ready to take their free ride to college and a better life, the federal government realized that it would be a good idea to at least make sure that this flood of taxpayer dollars wasn’t being spent on a back alley degree of quackery.

Not wanting to get too involved or face allegations that the Fed was trying to infringe on universities’ freedom to teach, they farmed out the job of checking schools for quality to the already existing accreditors.

Jumping forward to now, accreditation has grown into a sizable area of business. While most, if not all accreditation organizations are structured as 501(c)(3) nonprofits, that hasn’t stopped them from growing their budgets into the millions of dollars, a significant chunk of which is then paid out in six figure salaries to key employees and officers.

A few, like the American Bar Association (ABA), have assets in the hundreds of millions, and they pay out to their officers accordingly.

The ABA is a good example of an accreditation body that focuses on a specific program in higher education, law schools. Other accreditation nonprofits are geared toward entire institutions—think the undergraduate-level colleges and universities—and distance education, which includes both online and hybrid education buckets. One university can easily have 10 or more accreditations requiring annual payments and maintenance through regular administration.

According to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), itself an accreditor along with the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), that approves and recognizes all other accreditation bodies, there are 19 institutional accreditors and 63 program-specific accrediting bodies.

When the U.S. government tasked these institutions to certify a school as worthy of disbursement of the G.I. Bill, they didn’t anticipate future Pell Grants, Federal Loans, and other monies that would become tied to their approval.

Today these nonprofit nongovernmental organizations (NGO), not only drain a tremendous amount of time and funding from universities but they also wield immense power, by gatekeeping billions in federal funds.

Nonprofit NGOs Controlling Federal Funding without Transparency or Oversight, What Could Go Wrong?

Unlike the federal government, you cannot request information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from any of these accreditors if, say, you’d like to check up on what’s going on with the decisions they are making.

Even though you can see their tax filings under the laws for 501(c)(3)s, you won’t get to see specifics on how or why they made a given decision on a university.

This is bad news for students and parents in a world where college has become big business. Most colleges and universities are also nonprofits, and some of them are tremendously wealthy. Increasingly, students are seen as customers and future donating alumni. This educational environment is a banquet for wolves, with the students served up as the main course.

Other than seeing if a school or program is accredited, students don’t have access to understanding what that accreditation means. Contextual documentation is safely hidden within unreachable accreditation records.

To make matters worse, evidence gathered from other sources paints a damning picture, that calls into question the fundamental value of accreditation. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) 2002 report, details how accreditation is a failure as an indicator of educational quality. Among the shortcomings, they mention:

1. Standardization stifles innovation.
2. It focuses on inputs and procedures and ignores learning outcomes.
3. Reliable studies show the quality of undergraduate education has steeply declined despite ubiquitous accreditation.
4. It is an expensive drain in annual fees paid to the accreditation body. Money and time are lost to institutional reviews, expenditures to comply with accreditor demands, and opportunity costs associated with all tasks that educators and administrators could perform instead of going through the lengthy process of application and regular maintenance of accredited status.
5. Accreditation organizations pay lip service to core curriculum concept, where students take a wide breadth of fundamental courses in natural sciences, history, philosophy, literature, religions, political traditions, math, humanities, and critical thinking before narrowing their educational focus. The standard isn’t enforced.
6. Accreditors are paid by the schools they accredit. This is a conflict of interest.
7. Accrediting standards can undermine a college’s academic mission with arbitrary rules like requiring educators have Ph.D.s thus barring industry leaders without degrees from teaching with their battle-tested expertise. In short, Bill Gates, for example, would be disqualified.
8. Inserting standards that inject moral beliefs into education like multicultural courses and diversity requirements.

At the time of this report, Social Justice Ideology had yet to fully take hold. Today, over 20 years later, their concern has been realized with the complete capture of the higher educational system.

Many who are celebrating the election results right now believe this problem has been solved with their vote. While some things may be possible at the moment that even a month ago would not be worth considering, it would be short-sighted and pollyannaish to think that this massive nonprofit industry would go away without increasing effort.

Since that report was filed, several attempts have been made to curtail accreditor’s power in one form or another, but these organizations use their burgeoning war chests to “advocate” or lobby. CHEA has vocally opposed calls to reform.

In 2022, The Chronicle for Higher Education published an article titled The Accreditation System Is Broken. In it, they discuss the appalling lack of standards of current accreditation organizations, noting examples where 20 percent of one accreditor’s educational institutions fail to graduate even two-thirds of students, with those who do graduate sometimes showing no economic return on their educational investment, and at least a third of graduates earning less than the poverty line.

That alone is horrible, what the article doesn’t address, but is arguably more concerning, is that where universities and colleges fail to educate students’ in valuable skills, they make up for by indoctrinating kids in Social Justice ideology.

Social Justice ideology is openly called for accreditation standards.

In 2021 CHEA adopted a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement. Therein, they write:

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are rooted in the cultural identity and lexicon of a civil society. However, in 2020, these words became aggressively polarizing among groups in America. Along with polarization, Americans either became fearful of their neighbors, separated from those who were different or they moved to a new awakening that there is much work to be done to reaffirm that America is indeed one nation, with liberty and justice for all.

They follow up this acknowledgment of the divisive and polarizing effects of this ideology with:

We believe that the rich values of diversity, equity and inclusion are inextricably linked to quality assurance in higher education. Additionally, CHEA affirms that diversity, equity, and inclusion contribute to student success; and, that student success contributes to a better, healthier, and more enlightened, progressive society.

In other words, damn the evidence, full speed ahead.

This effectively sums up our educational strategy if we fail to capitalize on this unique opportunity to demand reform. So enjoy the TikToks of progressives screaming that the country has caved into fascism for another day or two. Then, it will be time to regroup and hammer out a plan to make repairs or consider that it’s time to chuck the whole darn thing. Whatever the path, the fight is not even close to over.

This article was first published by Minding the Campus on November 13, 2024.