Some Republican states push for new college accreditation agency : NPR

Some Republican states are starting a new college accreditation agency to increase what they call “intellectual diversity”.

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The Trump administration is proposing new rules to address what it calls intellectual diversity in higher education. Some colleges and universities in the South could see those changes first because of a new accreditor that’s just starting up. Orlando Montoya of Georgia Public Broadcasting has more.

ORLANDO MONTOYA, BYLINE: Accreditors are a must-have stamp of approval for institutions of higher learning. They evaluate things like graduation rates, financial stability and curriculums, and have the power to influence a lot on campuses, including curriculum and hiring. The U.S. Department of Education recognizes about three dozen institutional accrediting agencies nationwide. In the South, public higher education tends to be dominated by one accreditor.

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RON DESANTIS: Oh, please be seated. Thanks so much.

MONTOYA: Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took aim at the region’s longtime accreditation giant, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges – or SACSCOC. At the news conference, he accused the agency of being more interested in liberal ideology than student achievement. He said Florida and five other conservative-led states would be forming their own agency.

DESANTIS: This endeavor will introduce a new accreditor into the marketplace. It’ll upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels.

MONTOYA: It’s called the Commission for Public Higher Education – or CPHE. Georgia officials signed onto it because they say it’ll cut down on bureaucracy and the lengthy delays of SACSCOC reviews. But University of North Georgia professor Matthew Bodie sees something more in its focus on intellectual diversity.

MATTHEW BODIE: That particular phrase has come from conservatives who attack higher education.

MONTOYA: Bodie leads the state’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Many vocal conservative critics of higher education, like the slain political activist Charlie Kirk, have long argued that colleges and universities have become, quote, “indoctrination factories” for liberal ideas. Bodie fears CPHE will be used as a cudgel to silence liberal voices on campus and curtail academic freedom.

BODIE: If you say a professor is in charge of what they put on a syllabi and yet you then also have to say, you have to have a certain number of conservatives or liberals or Marxists or anti-Marxists on your syllabi, you’re really contradicting the academic freedom you just said that you support.

MONTOYA: It’s unclear how the new accreditor reviews will shake out in practice, but University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue dismisses concerns.

SONNY PERDUE: Why would a faculty member be concerned about intellectual diversity? I think one of the problems that’s been there is there’s been very little intellectual diversity.

MONTOYA: He points to the involvement of CPHE’s founding chairman, Mark Becker, the highly regarded former president of Georgia State University. For its part, the older agency, SACSCOC, is already making changes as colleges and universities shop around for accreditors. Stephen Pruitt became its president last year.

STEPHEN PRUITT: I called for our standards to be revised immediately.

MONTOYA: Pruitt says he’s addressing concerns of some state leaders by reducing paperwork and pushes back on the idea that his agency is focused on liberal ideology.

PRUITT: We were, I think, the only accreditor that didn’t have DEI standards. I think all the other ones did. But yet somehow, we got pegged with that.

MONTOYA: Another change – starting in September, SACSCOC will be renamed the Commission on Colleges and Universities. The new CPHE could accredit its first institutions this fall and get U.S. Department of Education recognition next year. Meanwhile, under proposed federal rules that could go into effect next summer, all U.S. institutional accreditors must have in place the means to address, quote, “intellectual diversity” on campuses.

For NPR News, I’m Orlando Montoya in Atlanta.

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