Dive Brief:
- A new report from a task force on accreditation for the California Community Colleges chancellor urges the state to drop the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the task force — made up of college administrators, faculty and union members, and a trustee — recommend giving the Senior College and University Commission responsibility for two-year colleges or finding a new regional accreditor.
- The task force found the ACCJC too punitive, writing that almost three-quarters of the state’s 113 community colleges were under some level of sanction in the last decade.
Dive Insight:
The ACCJC was widely condemned for moving to revoke the accreditation of the City College of San Francisco in 2013. It refused to extend deadlines for the community college to fix the fiscal and governance problems that were threatening its closure, even though the Department of Education stepped in to encourage it. A judge halted the move and has since asked the commission to reconsider its earlier decision. Losing accreditation would have made the City College of San Francisco ineligible for federal student aid, forcing its closure. The college, at the time, had 80,000 students.