Dissension In The ranks? Some Accrediting Agencies Embrace Guidance To Improve Complaint Processes, Others Push Back

The Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), the main lobbying group for accrediting agencies, is arguing that improving accreditors’ complaint processes requires additional time, negotiated rulemaking, and much more clarity from the Department of Education. But not all CHEA members agree. Indeed, on this point, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education has publicly stated that CHEA does not speak for it.

This disagreement comes in response to guidance from the Department of Education that requires accrediting agencies to improve how they handle complaints about the colleges and universities they oversee. The guidance is aimed at making it more straightforward for students and college staff to understand how the accreditor complaint process works so that it is easier to warn accreditors when colleges fail to follow their standards.

Accreditors, the Department of Education, and states are part of a triad that maintains program integrity across higher education. The largest accreditation agencies accredit entire institutions, providing the stamp of approval that colleges need to access federal financial aid dollars. Because most institutions need access to federal financial aid for their students, accreditation is essential for keeping colleges solvent.

Complaints from students, staff, and faculty provide insight into a college’s performance, so one way accreditors can track whether colleges abide by their standards is by monitoring complaints properly. For example, accreditors typically require institutions to employ appropriately trained and qualified faculty members, assess whether students receive sufficient academic support, and ensure that students complete their programs at a reasonable rate. If it is hard for students to submit a complaint about, say, poor academic support, it is harder for accreditors to hold schools accountable for their standards, leaving students in harm's way.

Unfortunately, sometimes accreditors have been reluctant or slow to make changes and improvements that would make student’s lives better. Earlier this year, we wrote about how accreditors were severely missing the mark with how they handled complaints about the schools they oversee. In the worst cases, accrediting agencies require complaints to be submitted via mail, in duplicate. The clear takeaway from our analysis of accreditor complaint policies and processes was that accreditors don’t provide a straightforward way for students and college staff to alert them to problems with their institutions.

The Department apparently agreed that accreditors were failing to implement effective complaint procedures. Recently, the agency issued guidance telling accreditors to make their complaint processes more accessible. The new guidance calls for changes that are both common sense and reasonable. The guidance requires accreditors to allow anonymous complaints, to inform a complainant when a complaint is submitted incorrectly, and to help complainants identify whether their issue relates to the agency’s standards.

In a letter opposing the guidance, CHEA said it “believes these recommendations introduce unnecessary duplication in the compliance process and curtail the independence of accrediting agencies in designing and implementing effective complaint resolution.”

But as we noted above, not all accrediting agencies think the guidance is unreasonable. In a statement, MSCHE president Heather F. Perfetti said, "Recent statements made by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) expressing concerns about this guidance for accreditors simply does not represent the position of our Commission.”

MSCHE used its statement to point out the recent changes it has implemented to make its complaints policy easier to understand and utilize. These changes, which were announced before the Department called for improvements, appear to place it in compliance with the guidance.

MSCHE deserves credit for revising and improving its complaints process. Its new approach incorporates many of the best practice recommendations we made in our report. These include extending by a year the time that can elapse between an incident and the complaint, providing complainants with a simple online form, and allowing for anonymous complaints. The MSCHE process continues to require more knowledge about accreditation standards than we think is necessary, but significantly improves the commission’s approach.

MSCHE’s changes to its processes and its break with CHEA on the new guidance demonstrates that it does not believe there is anything unreasonable about the Department’s new requirements. CHEA’s opposition to reasonable changes and improvements suggests it has lost sight of what is best for students. Other accreditors should look to MSCHE as an example of how to re-think and improve their complaints processes.

Unfortunately, MSCHE seems to be the outlier for now. Other accrediting agencies, including The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and the New England Commission of Higher Education, have justified their complicated complaint processes by arguing they need to limit frivolous grievances, assuming that a difficult process will weed out spurious complaints. But anything designed to weed out spurious complaints will likely also incorrectly weed out legitimate complaints. To put that concern in context, The Southern and New England commissions have also suggested that receiving less than one complaint per institution per year is burdensome.

As guarantors of institutional quality, accreditors have the potential to truly improve higher education to the benefit of all college students. Embracing change of long-standing systems and approaches is challenging, but by doing so, accreditors can operate as true guardians of our higher education system. Making common-sense improvements to their complaints processes is just one small way to demonstrate that accreditors are willing to embrace positive changes to protect students.