Dive Brief:

• Community college chancellors and presidents are turning up the heat on the accrediting commission for the City College of San Francisco, asking that a July 31 accreditation deadline be extended 12-18 months.
• So far, 50 California community college leaders have signed a letter seeking the extension from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, the Los Angeles Times reported.
• If it isn’t given more time to correct fiscal problems and other issues, then the state’s largest single college, with 80,000 students, will lose eligibility to receive state or federal funds and to transfer credits to four-year schools, and San Francisco will lose its only workforce training institution, according to a leader of the letter-writing campaign.

Dive Insight:

The letter writers are seeking support from more of the colleges in the state before sending a final letter to the accreditation commission on June 16. The commission moved last year to revoke accreditation for CCSF based on its serious fiscal and governance problems, among other issues. Advocates for the school say it deserves more time because it has new leadership and 95% of the deficiencies have been corrected. As the Los Angeles Times points out, the commission’s recognition by the federal government could be in jeopardy if it loses the support of the colleges, because those colleges are members of the accrediting panel.