Recently Senator Marco Rubio offered some new ideas for reducing the costs of college. He proposed some national experimental accreditation agencies. He also made clear that accrediting agencies are a primary source of the astronomic and rising costs of higher education.
Who am I to jump into this debate and even suggest that part of the horrible anti-education anti-Jew Lefty bias of colleges may have the same source?
I was on a specialized accreditation committee. The State of California accredits colleges to operate. This occurs long before the same institution is eligible for accreditation by the standard six self-perpetuating accrediting agencies.
The educational group being accredited was the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. It only gives postgraduate degrees. I was on the committee because of the financial issues that needed review.
The basic goal of accreditation in all academic circumstances is to make sure that an educational organization that offers degrees or certification is capable of taking the students money, offering the course material that it promises and surviving long enough to deliver the degrees or certificates. It is a fraud prevention function.
An aside. The the accreditation agency for community colleges decertified the City College of San Francisco, after giving three years of warning. I was stunned to find a Superior Court judge who stopped the decertification. The decertification notice was issued because the college could not survive based on its incompetent and bankrupt financial management. How in the world could a Superior Court judge decide that the finances were adequate to keep the school going? He, Curtis Karnow, couldn’t. Judges are often corrupt. Too often.
The accreditation committee I was on looked at the financial reserves to make sure that the Institute could pay the faculty, the rent and all administrative costs for enough years to survive in business till the last student graduated. We made sure the faculty had sufficient educational and professional experience to deliver the subject matter. Many Ph.Ds on the faculty is the usual measure. The building maintenance levels were checked. And lastly that all the course descriptions fit the amount of video, audio and print reference material available.
For the thousands of colleges and universities in the U.S. that are accredited by the six accrediting agencies, each pays $millions annually for their accreditation. No one can get into this private elite club unless they are just as expensive and just as Lefty and just as a academically zombie ridden as the existing institutions. The six accreditation agencies are a pure zombie maintenance system.
With Senator Rubio’s proposal, a new innovative and inexpensive academia could arise and flourish. Private colleges and universities might even be formally accredited. God forbid (Sarcasm).