WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, day three of the Community College National Legislative Summit, Diane Auer Jones, the U.S. Department of Education’s principal deputy under secretary, highlighted the government’s upcoming priorities for community colleges.
The conference, hosted by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), brought together over 1,000 community college leaders to examine current legislative higher education regulations.
In her speech, Jones discussed upcoming policy changes that would impact postsecondary institutions and students.
She said that with new accreditation regulations, it is now possible to have multiple governance models. Accreditors can have alternative standards to evaluate an institution’s progress.
“We understand that for many of your programs, it’s not the terminal degree that matters but the experience the person brings,” said Jones. “So we said to accreditors that it is okay to have different standards to evaluate an institution’s efforts and accomplishments in meeting its goals.”
Regulations also eliminated the “artificial distinction” between regional and national accreditors. National accreditors will be placed in one of three categories: institutional, programmatic and specialized accreditor.
“The idea is to not pick winners and losers,” said Jones. “The idea is to say that we hold all accreditors to the same standards, we don’t have different requirements for regional and national accreditors.”
