Dive Brief:
- The leading accreditation group in the U.S. on Monday called for the U.S. Department of Education to withdraw its recent guidance on how accrediting agencies should handle complaints against colleges or academic programs.
- The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, or CHEA, said the Education Department’s directives from August “curtail the independence of accrediting organizations” in developing complaint resolution processes. An Education Department spokesperson, however, said in an email Tuesday that the guidance aims to ensure each complaint is heard, “regardless of the source or manner in which it was submitted. This is not new criteria.”
- Under the guidance, Education Department officials will consider multiple factors to determine if a resolution process is “timely, fair and equitable,” as per the current regulatory standard. Those factors include whether accreditors have accommodations for people with disabilities, and if they allow multiple avenues for reporting.
Dive Insight:
Accreditor critics have argued the organizations’ procedures for filing complaints can be onerous and dissuade reporting. This is part of a broader accusation that accreditors too often don’t hold colleges under their purview accountable, as the institutions pay accreditors since they operate as membership organizations.
Thus, the August guidance drummed up excitement among accountability advocates that it might pressure accreditors to be more vigilant.
“Accrediting agencies' complex complaints processes are likely suppressing the number of complaints they receive and missing problems at institutions that warrant investigation,” Edward Conroy, a senior adviser at left-leaning think tank New America, wrote about the guidance in a blog post last month. “We are grateful to the Department for this robust guidance and hope it will help agencies improve how they handle and investigate issues at the institutions they oversee.”
Not everyone is so grateful, though.
CHEA argued on Monday that “the guidance lacks clarity, fails to define its expectations, and leaves room for ambiguous interpretations” by the Education Department.
“Furthermore, these recommendations may unfairly penalize accrediting organizations even when acting in good faith and impose arbitrary complaint procedures on institutions without their input,” CHEA said.
CHEA is a nongovernment group that recognizes and evaluates accreditors, as well as lobbies for accreditation standards. It urged the Education Department to rescind the guidance and said changes to policy should happen through either legislation or the regulatory process.
The guidelines outline how accreditors should keep complainants in the loop and establish “clear timelines” for resolving grievances. They should also provide easily understood guidance for filing complaints, the guidance states.
“Complaints whether from the public, faculty, or students may be an important indication of quality issues at an institution and it is critical that accrediting agencies evaluate and respond to complaints,” the Education Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
“If an agency has a policy that requires complainants to send two copies to a random P.O. Box in the middle of nowhere and include a wet signature in order for it to be evaluated, that may not be timely, fair, or equitable.”
