That is the conclusion of a new analysis released Tuesday by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The analysis found that one out of every five borrowers at a college accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS, defaults on his or her loans within three years of entering repayment—a rate 50 percent higher than the national average.
“Such high default numbers are particularly troubling because students at ACICS-accredited colleges take out student loans at higher rates and in greater amounts than those at colleges accredited by other agencies,” states the analysis, written by Ben Miller, Senior Director for Postsecondary Education at the Center for American Progress.
The analysis states that, while ACICS’ performance is worse than that of its peers, its problems are “emblematic of larger structural flaws that exist in this national accreditation space.”
“This is not an arcane policy matter,” Miller states in his paper. “As the gatekeepers to federal student aid, accreditors’ lax approval standards can open the door to mass fraud that undermines confidence in loan programs and the broader postsecondary education system.”
Though the paper refers to ACICS’ failed oversight of Corinthian Colleges—a for-profit college company that closed and filed for bankruptcy earlier this year amid allegations of fraud and led the federal government to issue billions of dollars in loan forgiveness to its former students—it says the default rates at the agency’s schools point to much larger problems.
