With U.S. President Donald Trump attempting to force academic accrediting agencies to be less “woke” and more responsive to conservatives’ demands, six public universities last week announced formation of their own accrediting agency.
This is an attempt to separate from the dominant accrediting body in the Old South, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, known most often as SACS.
Conservatives have complained for years that SACS and other similar accrediting agencies are not responsive to their concerns or worldviews. In particular, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has battled SACS as he has sought to take over public higher education in the Sunshine State and make it more to conservatives’ liking.
Now, public universities in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee have created the Commission for Public Higher Education.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media during a press conference at Christopher Columbus High School on Monday, March 27, 2023, in Miami, Fla. The press conference was held to announce DeSantis’s signing of a private school voucher expansion.(Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP)
The new group “will upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels, and it will provide institutions with an alternative that focuses on student achievement, rather than the ideological fads that have so permeated those accrediting bodies over the years,” DeSantis said at Florida Atlantic University last Thursday. “We care about student achievement; we care about measurable outcomes; we care about efficiency; we care about pursuing truth; we care about preparing our students to be citizens of our republic.”
The Florida governor said such ideals have “played second fiddle if they were even given any credence at all under these more prevailing accreditation models.”
DeSantis also said the DEI standards required by current accreditors amount to “indoctrination” rather than education.
“What we’ve seen develop is an accreditation cartel,” DeSantis said. “The accreditors by and large are all singing from the same sheet of music, and it’s not what the state of Florida wants to see reflected in its universities.”
While creating a new accrediting agency is a daunting task, DeSantis said leaders of CPHE are working with Trump’s Department of Education to seek expedited federal approval and to entice more states to join.
“What we’ve seen develop is an accreditation cartel.”
“We need these things approved and implemented during President Trump’s term of office, because the reality is, if it doesn’t get approved and stick during that time, you can have a president come in next and potentially revoke it, and they could probably do that very quickly,” he said. “Obviously, we didn’t really have the prospects of launching anything like this successfully during the Biden years, but it’s a new day and I think this is going to make a big, big difference.”
Schools already onboard with the new agency are the Texas A&M University System, State University System of Florida, University System of Georgia, University of North Carolina System, University of South Carolina and University of Tennessee System. All are located in so-called “red states” where Republicans and evangelicals hold sway.
DeSantis said he hopes other conservative states in the South will join the group.
“SACS has been such a problem and people want to get away from it,” he said. “They’ll see this accreditation consortium is really offering the type of vision that the leadership in those states believe in.”
A news release from the new group quotes University of North Carolina System President Peter Hans as saying: “A more focused and effective approach to accreditation will bring down costs, benefit students and build confidence in public higher education. By creating an accreditor closely focused on the needs and responsibilities of public universities, we can help strengthen these vital institutions.”
This effort is distinct from another new consortium created last year, the Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities. That consortium is not an accrediting body. It was created by the American Council on Education.
Last month, about 50 college and university presidents gathered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for a symposium where ACE President Ted Mitchell said, “Faith-based institutions are the bedrock of American higher education, and we’ve not paid adequate attention to that role and to that responsibility.”
This consortium includes schools such as Baylor, Brigham Young, Georgetown, Pepperdine, Samford, Wheaton and Yeshiva.
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