The COVID-19 Pandemic and Accreditation

September 2, 2020

HEADLINES

Pandemic Unlikely to Hurt Columbia’s Higher Learning Commission Accreditation, Administrators Say (Columbia College Chicago, August 28, 2020) “Even though a majority of courses at Columbia will be held online or hybrid, the college’s accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission is unlikely to be threatened.”

Make American Slavery Course a Requirement (Lansing City Pulse [Op-Ed], August 28, 2020) "Accreditation agencies’ general education requirements pave the way for a mandatory American slavery class.”

A New Approach for Curbing College Tuition Inflation (Manhattan Institute, August 27, 2020) "The system of oversight should be based largely on outputs (e.g., first-year earnings, student loan repayment rates). It would essentially be a pay-for-performance model of subsidization. The advantage of this system is that it eliminates the artificially high burden of accreditation and replaces it with a system that rewards precisely those colleges and universities that deliver the return that we are seeking."

Five Takeaways from the Ed Dept's Final Distance Education Rules (Education Dive, August 25, 2020) The new regulations allow colleges to use instructional teams, rather than individual instructors, for distance education if the teams meet accreditor requirements."

It's Past Time (Inside Higher Ed [Op Ed], August 25, 2020) "There is no such thing as a harm-free college closure, but they don't have to be as harmful for students as the precipitous collapses of schools like ITT Tech and Mount Ida College. While colleges and regulators may not be able to stave off closures, they can act to minimize future harm. But that means they have to start planning now for permanent closures that will hopefully never come to pass. Accrediting agencies and states can kick-start that process by watching for key warning signs."