July 16, 2024

Education Dept. Panel Should Probe Accreditor ACCET

A U.S. Department of Education advisory committee will meet August 6 to 8 for one of its twice-a-year sessions to review the performance of some of the nation’s college accrediting agencies. Members of the committee, which is called NACIQI, may end up having another public disagreement over the appropriate scope of evaluating accreditors — in particular whether it’s fair game for NACIQI and the Department to draw conclusions about an accreditor based on recent failures to detect or punish harmful behavior by one or more schools under its watch. 

One might think it would be obvious that information about egregious misconduct by schools could spur action against accreditors charged with monitoring those schools. But this is one of many strange aspects of the higher education world.

The debate could arise again when NACIQI considers the renewal (also called re-recognition) application of one accreditor on this meeting’s docket, a 50-year-old agency called the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education & Training, or ACCET.

The debate over considering school abuses in grading accreditors

Accreditors like ACCET are non-profit organizations charged, through boards stocked with college officials and others, with monitoring the quality and integrity of American colleges and universities. If a college isn’t accredited, students cannot use federal grants and loans toward tuition there, other government agencies may not approve enrollment there, and graduates may not be eligible for jobs in their chosen field.

Just as accreditors are supposed to scrutinize schools for fitness for the task of educating students, the Department of Education and NACIQI are charged with scrutinizing the accreditors to ensure they are adequate gatekeepers.

NACIQI is made up of eighteen policy experts, college officials, and others, some appointed by the White House, others by Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. NACIQI’s role is to review recommendations by the Department of Education staff regarding the continued federal recognition of accrediting agencies. After NACIQI meets and renders its judgments, the Secretary of Education or a designated senior Department official issues final decisions. 

Unfortunately, for much of its history, the federal accreditor review process has been largely on auto-pilot. Schools and accreditors filled out forms, the Department and NACIQI checked boxes, and five year renewals were granted. 

But an explosive scandal over deceptive and predatory practices at for-profit colleges — leaving veterans, single mothers and other victims with worthless degrees and buried in debt — led the Obama administration, in its final year, to reject the renewal of accreditor ACICS, which had failed to address egregious abuses at big for-profit college chains including Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Kaplan, and EDMC. At the end of a long, contentious meeting in 2016, NACIQI endorsed the termination of ACICS’s recognition.

Then, Donald Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, who staffed her top ranks with former for-profit college executives and repeatedly undermined protections for students, reversed that decision and restored ACICS. But the Biden administration in August 2022 cut off the accreditor again, and ACICS finally shut down.

With the most obviously awful accreditor gone, the Biden education department seems to have retreated somewhat. When accreditors come up for renewal, the staff reports from the Department of Education’s accreditation unit have mostly reverted to box-checking mode — hundreds of pages of reporting on an accreditor policies and processes, with few to no real world examples of school performance or problems. Indeed, schools whose abuses have been front-page news may never be mentioned at all in a Department report on an accreditor.

A long-time education policy expert tells me, “In the bizarro world of accreditation, the one thing that no one apparently looks at is whether the accreditor is actually doing the job or not: as long as its paperwork is in order, the fact that the schools an accreditor has rubber-stamped are openly plundering and pillaging is not only not investigated, it is ruled as inadmissible.”

Outside commenters from pro-student advocacy groups, and this writer, have continued to press the Department, through written submissions and oral comments at NACIQI meetings, to hold accreditors — including ACCSC and Higher Learning Commission — accountable for school abuses happening on their watches. (Our participation has remained limited, because Department procedures have required advocates to submit any written comments many months in advance, the Department has concealed from the public its detailed reviews of accreditors until the last minute, if they are released at all — although the Department has pledged to improve on that score — and oral comments at NACIQI meetings by members of the public are limited to three minutes.)

Despite our efforts to shine a light on school abuses, the Department has for the most part recommended full five-year renewals for most accreditors. In a couple recent cases where advocates highlighted abuses at particular schools, the Department itself pointed out shortcomings but delayed its decisions for so long that the practical effect ended up being the same old five-year extensions

Some NACIQI members, including former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Education Robert Shireman and former New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education Zakiya Smith Ellis, have argued that serious school abuses are relevant to accreditor evaluations.

But other members of the panel, led by for-profit college owner Arthur Keiser, have continued to insist that the old way of doing things, the way that usually ignores flagrant school abuses, is the only way.

Keiser’s own schools have faced public controversies over recruiting abuses and financial conflicts of interest. Keiser led the attack at the 2016 NACIQI meeting on the Obama effort to terminate ACICS; under Trump, a Republican-appointee-heavy NACIQI membership tapped him to be the NACIQI chair. (Claude Pressnell, Jr. the head of a Tennessee association of private colleges, succeeded Keiser as chair last year.) More recently, Keiser’s schools have had their own problems from their accreditors and Department oversight of their accreditors.

The two sides of the debate may be aired again at the August meeting, perhaps in the discussion of ACCET.

Evaluating ACCET

In contrast to the departed ACICS, ACCET is a modest-sized accreditor, many of whose schools are small. But like ACICS, ACCET oversees mostly for-profit and career schools — about 200 schools in all.  They include ArcLabs Welding School, Crescent City School of Gaming & Bartending, Portland Fashion Institute, Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, a chain called MyComputerCareer, and Kaplan International language school, a larger operation that is part of troubled Kaplan education group, owned by Graham Holdings (formerly called The Washington Post Company). ACCET also accredits a number of Saudi Arabia-based schools associated with the oil giant Saudi Aramco. 

ACCET’s current executive director is Res Helfer, formerly the owner of a for-profit college.

The Department staff’s recommendation for ACCET never even mentions any bad-acting schools under that accreditors’s eye. But it does, surprisingly, recommend only a one-year continuance of ACCET’s recognition and requires the agency to come into compliance within a year with a number of Department standards.

The report also discloses that ACCET originally asked the Department for approval to expand its mandate from associates degrees to applied bachelor’s degrees but later withdrew that request. 

The publicly-released version of the Department staff’s report is 22 pages of recitations of policies and procedures and alleged deficiencies in ACCET’s written statements and explanations. Still concealed from the public is a longer staff report, which I understand is 371 pages of diligent recitation of these technical matters, and, as with the shorter public version of the report, no mention of any schools at all, and no discussion of any ACCET efforts, or failures, to ensure quality and integrity when particular schools performed poorly. [UPDATE 07-31-24: The longer Department report has now been released and is as described above.]

These Department reports therefore leave some important gaps in the story of ACCET’s performance. I’m not at all suggesting that the Department should terminate ACCET, like it did ACICS, because I don’t see evidence of an ACICS-level failure.  I do think the Department, and NACIQI, need explanations for some apparent gaps in oversight by this accreditor, and that there should be some accountability, to push ACCET and other accreditors to be more proactive about cracking down on college misconduct. 

ACCET’s oversight of IEC schools

Earlier this year, the Department of Education terminated financial aid eligibility to a chain called Florida Career College, and the school closed. As part of the resolution of that matter, the CEO of International Education Corporation, the parent company of Florida Career College, stepped down. The Department acted because it found, as described in a detailed 38-page letter sent to FCC in April 2023, blatant cheating at FCC on “ability-to-benefit” entrance exams for students without a high school diploma. Republic Report, relying on interviews with numerous FCC staff, had first exposed that rampant misconduct, which went on for many years at the school, along with other blatant recruiting and financial abuses.

ACCET did not accredit Florida Career College, but it accredits multiple campuses of UEI College, the remaining major school chain still operated by International Education Corporation.

The Department’s February 2024 settlement agreement with IEC indicates that the Department has been investigating potential violations at UEI since at least last summer: “The Department has an open investigation ofUEI/UEIC (“UEI/UEIC Investigation”). The UEI/UEIC Investigation relates to potential violations ofthe ATB regulations similar to those described in the FCC Denial, as well as other potential regulatory violations as set forth in the Department’s letter ofJuly 31, 2023 (“July 31, 2023 Letter”). The UEI/UEIC Investigation remains ongoing.” And the settlement bars UEI from administering ATB tests going forward. 

Other UEI campuses are accredited by ACCSC, which, soon after the Department announced last in April 2023 that it was taking action against FCC, placed UEI College and International Education Corp. on “System-Wide Warning” status, citing the Department’s findings that senior IEC leaders knew of and encouraged the cheating, and also citing IEC’s alleged failure to  inform ACCSC of the Department’s investigation in a timely manner. ACCSC also noted that IEC had voluntarily halted ability-to-benefit testing and enrollment at UEI; the accreditor’s May 2023 order included a requirement that such testing and enrollment be suspended — suggesting already that there might be questions about ATB testing at UEI. 

Meanwhile, there is no notice of formal action, or any other public indication, that ACCET has done anything to address IEC’s abuses. So not only did ACCET fail to notice problems at IEC over the years, it has failed, apparently, to take action of any kind even after the Department exposed years of violations at FCC and IEC. 

In fact, from the accreditor’s website, it appears that ACCET has not taken any adverse action against any member schools since it withdrew accreditation against a Jacksonville school called CDA Technical Institute — almost two years ago.

A long-time for-profit college industry executive told me of ACCET, “They don’t do adverse actions.”

The executive described an ACCET practice that minimizes public violations: “During an accreditation visit, if an accreditation issue is discovered that can be immediately corrected — such as inappropriate advertising on a webpage — then it does not have to be reported as a finding.” [UPDATE 08-08-24: At today’s session of the NACIQI meeting, a NACIQI member asked an ACCET representative whether this assertion by the industry executive was true, and the ACCET member said it was not, asserting that all violations are noted on reports.]

ACCET’s oversight of Premier schools

There were so many problems at a college operation that included the Harris School of Business that in 2020 the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos terminated federal aid to the schools. Most recently, the operation had failed to inform the Department that the schools had changed owners, failed to secure a required $6.5 million letter of credit to ensure funds for students and creditors in the event of collapse, and failed to pay its staff.

Before that, the schools, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, faced a whistleblower lawsuit alleging (1) that they regularly misled students about the value of their programs, and (2) signed up even students who had little chance of benefiting, such as a student with an electronic ankle bracelet training to be a pharmacy technician, when certification for that job generally excludes people with felony or drug convictions. The lawsuit, which was the subject of a 2014 front-page New York Times article, claimed that Harris made false reports to the government about its students in order to keep eligibility for federal student aid. The company, then called Premier Education Group, settled the case in 2019, paying $3.4 million while admitting no wrongdoing. 

A 2015 letter from the Department recounted numerous problems at Harris, including failure to document student eligibility for financial aid, failure to offer hours of instruction as promised in the school catalogue, inadequate monitoring of student attendance, and alleged misrepresentations, including failing to tell students that Harris lacked the necessary accreditation to make its medical assisting programs graduates eligible to take a key licensing examination. 

A 2014 lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney general alleged that another school that Premier owned, Salter College, made false representations to students regarding the selectivity of its admissions and job placement rates. To resolve the case, the company aid students $3.75 million and later provided $1.6 million in debt relief and agreed to close its only two Salter campuses, both in Massachusetts, one at the former location of a strip club

A 2019 investigation by The Hechinger Report and NBC News found deceptive recruiting, high prices, and poor student outcomes at Premier-operated schools including Harris and Salter.

ACCET, as well as ACCSC, moved to end accreditation of the company’s schools it oversaw — but only after DeVos cut off federal aid, when the point was basically moot. Even the discredited ACICS had been more vigilant, it withdrew accreditation from another of Premier’s schools, Branford Hall, in Connecticut, in 2017.

NACIQI should be asking why ACCET didn’t take strong action against the Premier schools sooner. 

Also, if ACCET was less than diligent in addressing problems at the IEC and Premier schools, what else might it be missing at its 200 other schools?

ACCET’s Form 28.1

The for-profit college executive with whom I spoke about ACCET said the accreditor focuses heavily on its Form 28.1, a document that records graduation and job placement rates. Those are important measures, but they can be gamed — and don’t appear “sufficiently rigorous” to ensure quality, as the Department’s regulations require.

The executive notes, “28.1 is self-reported data, and while ACCET reviews the data during a visit, schools know how to control what is reported.” Where admissions offices may be “too aggressive” and recruit students who aren’t prepared to succeed, the academic division of the school may end up removing students quickly “instead of counting them as active.” Thus reported graduation rates may look better than the reality. The executive added, “While this helps the student who maybe shouldn’t have ever been enrolled, it mainly is to protect what is reported on 28.1.”

For-profit schools also have been caught many times counting as placed in relevant jobs graduates who really aren’t. 

A 2018 report by Robert Shireman, writing in his capacity as a researcher and senior fellow at the non-profit Century Foundation — and before he became a member of NACIQI — documented that ACCET had expressed repeated concerns in the years 2012 to 2014 about the failure of one its schools, InterCoast College, to accurately report its job placement record. Yet ACCET never took firm action against InterCoast. 

Other matters at ACCET are also worthy of NACIQI’s attention. 

ACCET and applied bachelor’s degrees

NACIQI might want to know why ACCET recently gave up its quest to seek approval from the Department to accredit applied bachelor’s degree programs. And why at least one ACCET-accredited school, the previously mentioned InterCoast Colleges, still appears to be pitching online a bachelor’s degree program in addiction studies. InterCoast has been offering this bachelor’s degree under a pilot program that is permitted by the Department of Education when an accreditor seeks authority to expand offerings. 

In response to a detailed message requesting comment on a number of issues, an ACCET staff member wrote to me today, “As we are preparing for our upcoming Commission meeting and the NACIQI meeting, we regret that we are unable to accommodate an interview at this time.” 

ACCET did provide me with several publicly available documents, and one is a May 29, 2024, letter to member schools informing them that the ACCET commission members decided not pursue its request to the Department for authority to expand to bachelor’s degrees. In the letter, ACCET explains that the commission “has determined that the expansion of scope should not be considered in tandem with re-recognition.” 

The ACCET letter asserts that InterCoast and two other schools that have participated in the BA pilot program “may continue to offer those programs and …graduates will receive a degree in an approved program for an accredited institution.” 

While InterCoast has the right to continue to “offer” the program in terms of allowing current students to complete their studies, I don’t think the school can “offer” the program to new students.

When I looked at the webpage on the program on InterCoast website, a live chat window popped up. I asked if the addiction studies BA was enrolling new students, and I was told in response, “The InterCoast Colleges’ Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in Addiction Studies has interim approval from its accreditor, ACCET.” Then the chatbot asked me for my full name. 

The live chat may simply have not been updated.  I didn’t go further in the dialogue. But ACCET should probably tell InterCoast to remove any suggestion that the program can accept new students for an accredited BA degree.

The only other documents the ACCET staff member sent me are copies of the letters that ACCET send to the Harris School of Business and related schools in October 2020, withdrawing accreditation.  As we noted above, ACCET took that action only after Secretary DeVos acted to end financial aid to the schools. 

ACCET forwarding a lobby group alert to schools

Finally, as we reported in February 2021, ACCET that month forwarded to its member schools an action alert from CECU, the lobbying group of for-profit colleges, calling on colleges to oppose legislation aimed at protecting U.S. veterans and military service members from predatory college abuses. Accreditors are supposed to monitor colleges to verify their integrity and effectiveness — not to rally colleges to oppose accountability measures. NACIQI should be asking why ACCET did this, and how it views its role.

I hope ACCET’s team will be ready to answer questions at the NACIQI meeting if members ask them about any of these matters.