ACICS Will Appeal SDO Decision to the Secretary, Warns that Decision Marks a Fundamental Shift in Accreditation Policy and Should Serve as a Wake-up Call for Other Accreditors
The Senior Department Official (SDO) at the Department of Education today accepted the recommendation of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) to terminate recognition of ACICS. Michelle Edwards, ACICS President, issued the following statement in response to the SDO decision:
With this decision, the Department of Education is embarking on a fundamental shift in accreditation policy – with no notice or explanation. It has been the longstanding practice of the Department of Education to grant recognition to accrediting agencies that are in substantial compliance with the recognition requirements, and continuous improvement has always been the guiding principle. Clearly, that practice is no longer in force.
All accreditors should see this moment as a wake-up call. You may believe you are in compliance with the recognition criteria, but that is not enough. You may believe the process is objective and standard across all institutions, but that is no longer the case.
As I have said throughout this process, I fundamentally believe that ACICS is in substantial compliance with any objective, consistent, and reasonable interpretation of the recognition criteria. I also believe the Department has failed to consistently apply its own rules to ACICS. We have been held to a different policy – a policy that does not exist anywhere in the regulations, a policy that allows for any incident of noncompliance, no matter how immaterial, to be cause for denial of continued recognition.
Furthermore, the SDO has made clear today that the findings of the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, released March 2, 2021, which determined that the Department did not comply with the regulatory requirements in its 2016 review of ACICS that leads directly to today’s action, are of no consequence. The OIG reviewed the work of the former Senior Department Official (SDO) and determined that the evidence supported the SDO’s decision in September 2018 that ACICS complied with 19 of the 21 recognition regulations in question and could demonstrate compliance with the two remaining regulations within 12 months. The OIG also found that the Office of the Under Secretary (“OUS”) in the Obama Administration exhibited disregard for the recognition regulations in ways that “unnecessarily slowed and negatively affected the recognition process for ACICS.” In addition, the OIG concluded that the Department’s lack of “detailed procedures…can and has led to inconsistencies across agency reviews regarding the amount of documentation that is deemed sufficient to demonstrate compliance with Federal recognition requirements.” Apparently, none of that matters.
ACICS will appeal the SDO decision to the Secretary. We have worked too hard over the past five years to strengthen our organization, our accountability, our procedures, and accreditation criteria not to fight this decision. All that we ask is that a decision regarding our continued recognition be driven by the improvements we have made and our effectiveness as an accreditor today, not by policy priorities and outside pressure from political activists. Every accreditor should be given that opportunity. And every accreditor should be deeply concerned if our appeal to the Secretary is denied.
ACICS has 30 days to submit its appeal to the Secretary. The SDO’s decision is stayed pending the appeal.