One of the benefits of living in Massachusetts is enjoying a swell of liberal pride when one of our politicians takes a stand for the people. It’s why we elected Liz Warren and Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and Silvio O. Conte (yes, he was a Republican, but with a soft spot for the environment the size of the Silvio O. Conte Fish and Wildlife Refuge). Add to that list Attorney General Maura Healey and her efforts to crack down on accrediting agencies that look the other way while colleges treat their students like marks walking down a crooked carnival’s midway rather than pupils at an academic institution. But that’s what you get, too often, when you mix private for-profit colleges and shoddy accrediting agencies. There’s plenty of data that shows students have less of a chance for success and more opportunity for accruing overwhelming debt when they enroll at for-profit private colleges instead of nonprofit and public schools.
In April, Healey was among a dozen state attorneys general who sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education asking it to dump one of the watchdog agencies it uses to ensure colleges meet minimum standards of ethical operation and student achievement.
The attorneys general allege that Accrediting Council Institute for Colleges and Schools, ACICS — which accredits a lot of for-profit private colleges — does a spectacularly poor job of gauging whether a college is a legit university or a hamster wheel. Of the accrediting agencies in the U.S., ACICS schools have the overall lowest average graduation rate — with fewer than 40 percent of students who enter the colleges actually receiving degrees. ACICS’ willingness to greenlight terrible schools caught the nation’s attention thanks to an investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The national average graduation rate, by the way, is 59 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Ed.
ACICS schools in Western Mass perform better than the average institutions the agency approves. ACICS has accredited three for-profit private, two-year higher-ed facilities: Salter College in Chicopee, Brandford Hall in Springfield, and Mildred-Elley in Pittsfield. The national average graduation rate at a for-profit, private college is 63 percent, but only two out of the three hit this mark.
Representatives from Salter, which has an average graduation rate of 62 percent, and Brandford, with a 68 percent graduation rate, did not return phone calls from the Advocate seeking comment. Maria Neal, vice president of marketing at Mildred-Elley, said ACICS has accredited the college since the late 1990s, but declined to comment further. “They’ve accredited us for many years, so we’re watching to see what’s going to happen, like everyone else,” she said.
What’s more concerning than the graduation rates at these for-profit colleges, however, are the student loan default rates. The national average default rate for for-profit two-year schools is 13.9 percent. That’s high, but it’s worse at the local ACICS schools. At Mildred-Elley, 15 percent of students who borrowed money have defaulted on their college loans. At Salter, 15.9 percent of students have defaulted, and at Brandford the rate jumps up to 22.4 percent, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.
The attorneys general say ACICS has shown “a fundamental lack of substantive oversight for student outcomes … Lapses that we have encountered include a failure to take action when improper job placement statistics are reported, inadequate job placement verification processes, and a lack of transparency and cooperation with investigations into student outcomes.” The letter also notes that ACICS is the accrediting institution behind Corinthian College, a degree mill that provided low-value certificates for a high price and collected $3.5 billion from the U.S. government through student loan and other educational programs before filing for bankruptcy. When that happened, thousands of students lost their nontransferable earned credits, their degrees became worthless, and they were still stuck with paying off their college loans.
I applaud Healey and the attorneys general from Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Kentucky, Iowa, D.C., New York, Hawaii, New Mexico, Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon for taking a stand to protect people who are willing to invest in themselves — which often requires personal sacrifice — to create their own opportunities for success.
For its part, ACICS responded to the February ProPublica-Chronicle article, “Who’s Regulating For-Profit Schools? Execs From For-Profit Colleges,” with a statement about the integrity of its board of accreditors, a number of whom, the news agencies discovered, are administrators at the troubled colleges they are being tasked with accrediting. Then last week, ACICS announced a search for a new CEO.
Because of the massive harm it has allowed to befall thousands of students, ACICS should no longer be allowed to accredit institutions of education in the U.S. A nationwide investigation and evaluation of college accreditors should be conducted. The U.S. Department of Education should be ashamed it hasn’t taken action on this yet. Though ProPublica and the Chronicle may have written the story that broke the camel’s back, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Washington Post have been covering this problem for years.
Financial abuse that dooms a student’s future before it gets started cannot be allowed to operate under the guise of education and the U.S. Department of Education knows that.•
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
