The relationship between California’s 113 community colleges and their accreditor, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, Western Association of Schools and Colleges (ACCJC), has been tense for years. According to an August report from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, the ACCJC issues a disproportionate number of sanctions compared to the six other regional accreditors.
The ACCJC also faced widespread criticism of its sanctions against the City College of San Francisco (CCSF), which some say caused CCSF’s total enrollment to drop by nearly 8,000 students in 2013.
Now the ACCJC is saying that it will work with community college CEOs to improve accreditation processes. “The new partnership will allow workgroup members to actively solicit inputs from college administrators, faculty and staff,” ACCJC President Barbara A. Beno told Diverse in an email on Wednesday night.
In an emailed statement sent out early on Wednesday morning and currently available on the organization’s website, the ACCJC said that Beno had met with Los Rios Community College District Chancellor Brian King and Contra Costa Community College District Chancellor Helen Benjamin last week.
“We hope to find a way to communicate the voice of California community colleges CEOs with the commission on areas of improvement,” King told Diverse.
The ACCJC oversees approximately 130 colleges in California, Hawaii, the United States territories of Guam and American Samoa, the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The majority of ACCJC institutions are located in California.
“The new ACCJC/CCCCEO team will provide fresh ideas and best practices to further strengthen the commission’s ongoing efforts to align accreditation standards and operations to the changing needs of regional colleges,” Beno wrote.
