A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published August 20 would revise 34 CFR Part 602, which governs the Secretary’s recognition of accrediting agencies, as part of the Department’s implementation of Executive Order 14279, “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education.” The public comment period closes September 21.
The proposal is based on the Department’s view that accreditation has operated for roughly a century as a system with limited competition, in which a relatively small number of established agencies have maintained longstanding relationships with institutions and faced limited incentives to change their approaches. The Department proposes to increase competition by making it easier for new accrediting agencies to seek federal recognition, allowing institutions greater flexibility to change accreditors, and removing procedural requirements that can make entry into the accreditation market more difficult.
The Department’s regulatory impact analysis, however, acknowledges that it does not have sufficient data to establish whether increased competition among accrediting agencies will produce the anticipated improvements in quality.
Two proposed changes are particularly notable because they would remove requirements that currently provide information about an accrediting agency’s capacity and approach before the agency receives federal recognition.
The first is the two-year operating requirement. Under current regulations, a new accrediting agency must have operated for at least two years, including making accreditation decisions, before the Department will consider recognizing it. The proposed rule would eliminate that requirement. Under the proposal, an agency could seek recognition once at least one institution has applied for accreditation, without first having to demonstrate a two-year record of accreditation decisions.
The Department characterizes the existing requirement as an unnecessary barrier to entry. The two-year period nevertheless provides an opportunity to evaluate whether a new agency has developed and applied standards in making actual accreditation decisions before the federal government recognizes that agency for purposes of Title IV participation.
