James.Boswell.Provectus

The decline of ACICS continues. As its accredited members seek other accrediting agencies, what future can there be for this beleaguered organization whose only purpose was to facilitate the victimization of American taxpayers and students?

Following the vote referenced above, ACICS sent the following message to its member schools.

“June 24, 2016

Dear Member Institutions and Colleagues:

The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) voted yesterday, Thursday, June 23, 2016 to send to the Senior Department Official (SDO) of the U.S. Department of Education a recommendation to deny recognition to ACICS. The SDO has 90 days to make a decision, based in part on the recommendations from the Committee and the Department staff, which also recommended a denial of recognition. ACICS will continue to exhaust its opportunities to inform the SDO before the record is closed. As more information becomes available, it will be shared with all ACICS colleges and schools.

It should be noted that students, graduates, employers and other community members provided articulate and supportive testimony to the Committee regarding the value and quality of education received at ACICS colleges and schools. That support fortified the efforts to secure a favorable recommendation from NACIQI, and are much appreciated.

Regards,

Anthony S. Bieda

Executive in Charge”

Yesterday, Department of Education analysts released a report recommending that ACICS should lose its status as an accreditor of institutions eligible to receive federal financial aid funding. This report follows upon the heels of strident criticism of ACICS over its failure to take action against its member institutions such as Corinthian Colleges, Inc., which collapsed even though it was fully accredited by ACICS. This blogger has previously described the sham evaluation process that ACICS member institutions undergo to earn and retain accreditation. As the Chronicle suggests, ACICS may sue the government, depending on how the report is acted upon, but the discovery process in any such litigation would reveal that ACICS does not take its responsibility seriously, and that it serves no purpose other than to enable for-profit machines such as Corinthian and others to stay in business, to the benefit of investors and to the detriment of students and taxpayers.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which has been the subject of prior postings on this blog, continues to be bombarded with criticism. The primary claim, bluntly stated, is that ACICS accreditation is a sham, going hand-in-hand with the efforts of for-profit ‘educational’ institutions to bilk the government and unsuspecting (or perhaps not so unsuspecting) students out of billions of dollars. ACICS has promised reform, and has halted the acceptance of new members pending that reform.

Not surprisingly, the criticism continues. On June 6, the Center for American Progress released a report condemning ACICS for failing to take action against accredited members that were under state or federal investigation for misconduct. The gist of the report is summarized in this statement: “In total, these results strongly suggest that ACICS is incapable of acting as a sufficient assessor of college quality and that its repeated poor judgment leaves millions of students and billions of taxpayer dollars at risk.”