One way to keep
colleges
from further enshrining their woke reigns of repression is to keep college accreditors from acting as enforcing arms for the repression.
The Defense of Freedom Institute, a think tank on educational and labor matters, released a helpful report this week called â
The State of Federal Accreditation Regulations and Guidance: Recent Reforms and New Opportunities.
â Its release is timely, considering a high-profile battle at the University of North Carolina in which its accrediting agency has tried to bully the school to
keep it from opening a school dedicated to free expression
.
HOW DEI IS WREAKING HAVOC ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
Read that again: The agency tasked with accrediting a university is threatening to punish the universityâs board for promoting free inquiry and civic leadership. The mind reels because, of course, UNCâs board is doing exactly what a universityâs very reason for existence is. The accreditorâs threat is like a football referee warning that he will throw a flag if a team scores a touchdown.
Thatâs just one example of how the educational establishment all across the country is trying to
repress expression and scholarship
that doesnât promote a left-wing narrative. As one longtime professor wrote to the Wall Street Journal, accreditors these days â
enforce currently fashionable groupthink
and intimidate boards to guarantee that universities impose it on students and faculty.â
Thatâs where the new DFI report comes in. It proposes to protect accreditation reforms implemented by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and implement further reforms.
âThe process for accreditation of a postsecondary institution is cumbersome, expensive, and ultimately ineffective from the perspective of the school, students, taxpayers, and employers,â notes the report. Without accreditation, however, colleges may not secure various federal grants and loans for their students, amounting nationwide to hundreds of billions of dollars.
DFI proposes a series of reforms, some of which, while important, seem more technical in nature. But one recommendation seems particularly relevant to todayâs culture wars by, in essence, telling accrediting agencies to butt out of those culture wars entirely.
DFI would âprohibit accreditors from using their Title IV gatekeeper status to impose their ideological views as a condition of accreditation or, worse, inserting those views into their standards for accreditation. … Congress can and must add stronger language to the HEA that protects the rights of university leaders, employees, and students, including academic freedom, and the rights to freedom of speech, religion, and association.â
Overall, though, the report emphasizes that accreditorsâ main focus should be on practical outcomes for students and certainly not on micromanagement of curriculum.
âBroad-based higher education reforms are needed in order to realign incentives to ensure that colleges and universities succeed only when their students succeed and are directed toward meaningful and achievable improvement when they do not,â writes DFI. âThey must embrace more market-based accountability systems that align an institutionâs financial incentives with their mission to serve students.â
Imagine that: making colleges accountable for results, not ideology. What a great idea. Indeed, it sounds like an idea well worthy of debate if, that is, the accreditors and the university administration commissars allow the debate to happen.
