The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is delighted to learn that six Southern states—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—have created the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE) to act as a new regional accrediting organization for public universities. America’s unelected regional accrediting organizations for too long have abused their powers. They do so in several ways but especially by advancing ideologically extreme political agenda. They also impose bureaucratic dysfunction on universities while tolerating their massive failure to produce improved educational outcomes. We hope that these six states will inspire the other 44 to abandon the accreditation cartel.
Accreditation reform is the necessary first step in reforming in our colleges and universities. Today’s accreditation cartel removes accountability from the higher education system. Accrediting organizations are insulated from federal control. They also impose requirements on universities, and especially public universities, that states cannot oppose without risking the accreditation status of their public universities—and thereby risking federal grants and loans to their students.
Because college administrators and faculty play crucial roles in accrediting organizations, such as staffing “site visitor teams,” accreditation often turns into an occasion for the radical education establishment to dictate their political agenda to universities. Accrediting organizations achieve political ends via ostensibly nonpolitical goals such as “attention to mission statements,” and ostensibly nonpolitical means such as “peer review.” The accrediting agencies maintain the pretense that they are independent, nonpartisan watchdogs over higher education while they are really assisting colleges and universities to avoid public accountability as they radicalize themselves.
Accrediting organizations force “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies on universities and effectively veto state laws to remove DEI. The Higher Learning Commission explicitly includes “diversity” in its accreditation criteria. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC) does not explicitly include “diversity” in its accreditation criteria, but it has published an official Position Statement proclaiming that it “supports and encourages the leadership role of its institutions in promoting and sustaining diversity, equity and inclusion in all arenas of higher education.”
SACSCOC also has behaved particularly badly by politicized interventions, such as its 2021 campaign to prevent the Florida Board of Governors from considering Richard Corcoran as President of Florida State University (FSU). Every college in the country has reason to leave the accreditation cartel, but SACSCOC’s victims had good cause to flee the Simon Legree of the accreditors.
NAS heartily endorses the creation of the CPHE, which the Trump administration has made possible by steady reforms of federal accreditation regulations in both terms. Our immediate concern is that the six states make sure that they follow up on this announcement with all the detailed work needed to make sure that the CPHE works as intended. Administrators and professors within the six state university systems surely will work to sabotage the rollout of this new system—and the saboteurs certainly will include “Deans of Accreditation” and other radical bureaucrats loyal to the old regime. The six public university systems should end the employment of as many accreditation bureaucrats as possible, both because their services should not be necessary in a reformed system and because they have shown themselves committed to the old DEI regime and, if left in place, will continue to undermine reform.
Federal bureaucrats at the United States Education Department may also try to throw sand in the gears. Then too, accreditation is a formidable task, even if simplified to remove bureaucratic dysfunction. CPHE’s announced emphasis on “student outcomes” also will require accurate and comprehensive data—and getting that data without building up a bureaucracy will be challenging. CPHE, finally, should be up and running by January 2029, in case supporters of the radical education regime regain control of the White House in the next presidential election. The six states’ governors and legislators should exercise continuing oversight to make sure that CPHE goes into effect fully and swiftly.
The measure of success won’t just be student outcomes. It will be the disappearance of thousands of university regulations and departmental committees set up to ensure accreditation compliance. SASCOC’s goal of “quality enhancement through continuous assessment and improvement,” generally shared by all the regional accreditors, subjects faculty members to endless micromanagement by accreditation-compliance bureaucrats. Accreditation dysfunction means timewasting imposed on every college administrator and professor. The big tyrannies such as DEI must go—but so too must every petty tyranny that accreditation compliance imposes.
We want CPHE to succeed—and we want CPHE to inspire further education reform. States around the nation need to change their laws to make it possibly for their public universities to exit the accreditation cartel. Other states should consider joining CPHE—or, alternately, forming new regional accreditation consortia as companions to CPHE. We also need depoliticized and efficient new disciplinary accrediting organizations, especially for medicine and law. We also would welcome internal reform by the existing accreditors in response to this new challenge—although we would caution policymakers to verify any announced reforms by SACSCOC and its peers, and make sure they’re not reforms in name only.
Several states among the six reformers now have laws on their books requiring their public universities to change accreditors regularly. They now may want to rescind those laws.
We also urge CPHE to make sure that its new accreditation system aligns with parallel efforts to reform liberal arts education, such as the Hamilton School in Florida, the School of Civic Life and Leadership in North Carolina, and the Civitas Institute in Texas. True liberal arts education should co-exist with “efficiency” and “student outcomes.” We particularly suggest that these six states make reformed liberal education a core component of general education by enacting legislation informed by our model General Education Act. They might work with the American Academy for Liberal Education to provide mission-aligned accreditation for general education.
But all this is for the future. These six states have done wonderfully by forming the Commission for Public Higher Education. We call on them to fulfill the promise of this excellent beginning.
Photo by Volha on Adobe Stock
