Dive Brief:
- The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity voted last week to limit the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges’ ability to approve four-year degrees in a hearing that highlighted the problems California community colleges will have whether the ACCJC exists or not.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that several people added testimony to the meeting, urging the committee to remove the accreditor’s federal recognition, but Chancellor Brice Harris condemned the accreditor while still asking its approvals of four-year degree programs at 11 schools hold.
- The National Advisory Committee gave the ACCJC six more months to fix noncompliance issues with federal regulations, which were identified in 2013, and the 11 community colleges will be able to accept students into bachelor’s degree programs — though three others that have started the approval will only be able to do so if they can get accreditation within 90 days.
Dive Insight:
The Chronicle reports that Harris plans to offer an alternative accreditation plan before he retires this spring. There is systemic lack of trust in the accreditor across the state’s community colleges, stemming from a 2013 attempt to revoke accreditation from the City College of San Francisco. That didn’t happen, thanks to a court injunction, but the college is not completely out of danger, still in a space of temporary approval while it attempts to get back in line with ACCJC’s demands. The accreditor, of course, is in the same situation with the feds.
But if California’s community colleges abruptly broke with the ACCJC, they’d be unaccredited until they gained approval from a new agency, left without access to federal financial aid in the potentially lengthy interim. At least one National Advisory Committee member believes improved communication could solve the problems. Perhaps the six-month grace period will be filled with bridge-building.