ACICS – Is the end near?
The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which has been the subject of prior postings on this blog, continues to be bombarded with criticism. The primary claim, bluntly stated, is that ACICS accreditation is a sham, going hand-in-hand with the efforts of for-profit ‘educational’ institutions to bilk the government and unsuspecting (or perhaps not so unsuspecting) students out of billions of dollars. ACICS has promised reform, and has halted the acceptance of new members pending that reform.
Not surprisingly, the criticism continues. On June 6, the Center for American Progress released a report condemning ACICS for failing to take action against accredited members that were under state or federal investigation for misconduct. The gist of the report is summarized in this statement: “In total, these results strongly suggest that ACICS is incapable of acting as a sufficient assessor of college quality and that its repeated poor judgment leaves millions of students and billions of taxpayer dollars at risk.”