The Education Department announced last week that it is stripping the powers of one of the nation’s largest accreditors of for-profit schools.
The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS, has been under scrutiny for continuing to accredit colleges whose students had strikingly poor outcomes.
As ProPublica has reported, schools accredited by the agency on average have the lowest graduation rates in the country and their students have the lowest loan repayment rates.
Accreditors are supposed to ensure college quality, and their seal of approval gives schools access to billions of federal student aid dollars.
As we have also reported, two-thirds of ACICS commissioners — who make the ultimate decisions about accreditation for schools — were executives at for-profit colleges. Many of the commissioners worked at colleges that were under investigation.
Critics who’ve pointed to abuses by for-profit colleges celebrated last week’s action.
“The rot from poor behavior spread beyond just the for-profit schools to the people who were supposed to be looking over them,” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress. “This is an extremely important decision both in protecting students and taxpayers.”
ACICS accredits over 200 colleges, which enroll an estimated 600,000 students. Schools accredited by ACICS received around $5 billion in federal student aid last year.
Two of the nation’s largest chains of for-profit colleges — Corinthian Colleges and ITT Educational Services — both remained accredited by ACICS while facing multiple investigations from government agencies before they shut down.
“ACICS’s track record does not inspire confidence,” wrote Education Department Chief of Staff Emma Vadehra in a letter to the agency’s chief executive last week.
Over the past few months, a growing chorus of critics have called on the Education Department to take action, including more than a dozen state attorneys general, over 20 consumer protection and advocacy groups, and members of Congress.
In June, the Education Department released a report on ACICS that raised 21 red flags, including about the agency’s reticence to sanction bad schools and even to verify the accuracy of schools’ metrics. The report also highlighted the agency’s lack of policing potential conflict-of-interest issues of its own board.
ACICS has said it plans to appeal last week’s decision to Education Secretary John King.
“While we are disappointed in this decision, ACICS plans to continue diligent efforts to renew and strengthen its policies and practices necessary to demonstrate this agency’s determination to come into full compliance,” said the agency’s chief executive Roger Williams in a statement posted on the agency’s website.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy