Accreditation
Higher education accountability in the United States is overseen by a regulatory triad involving state licensing bodies, independent accrediting agencies, and the federal government. Powers recognizes the importance of institutional and programmatic (or specialized) accreditation. Maintaining institutional accreditation is critical for accessing federal funding and ensuring students are provided an education of recognized quality, while programmatic accreditation provides for rigorous peer review of a specific academic program and can be crucial to ensuring students are eligible for licensure or examination in a given profession.
With decades of experience as trusted counsel within all sectors of higher education, the Powers Education Group partners with career schools, colleges, and universities in addressing complex legal issues, including accreditation challenges and opportunities. We also advise institutions regarding changes in federal rules and policies that impact accreditation. The firm has a strong track record of supporting higher education clients with start-to-finish services across a wide spectrum of matters involving institutional and programmatic accreditation, such as:
- Accreditation appeals
- Adverse actions and show cause orders
- Candidacy applications
- Change of accrediting agencies
- Changes of control and ownership
- Closures and teach-outs
- Complaints filed with accreditors
- Debarment
- Dispute resolution
- Good cause extensions
- Mock site visits
- Reaffirmation/renewal processes
- Requests for reconsideration
- Responses to team reports
- Policy drafting and development
- Self-study drafting and review
- Strategic planning
- Substantive change applications
- Trainings on accreditation-specific topics
- Withdrawals or revocations of accreditation
The attorneys in the education practice are supported in this work by the firm’s higher education specialists. In particular, Dr. Ellyn McLaughlin has years of experience assisting institutions with acquiring and retaining accreditation, including conducting mock site visits and preparing applications, self-study reports, and other submissions for both institutional and programmatic accreditors. This expertise is supplemented by Dr. Sharon Bob, who has conducted numerous accrediting visits throughout both the United States and Europe as a peer reviewer, and Dr. Cynthia Grunden, who has served as a peer reviewer for a major institutional accreditation agency with a primarily regional scope.
Our team has decades of experience successfully assisting clients with accreditation-related matters. Recent examples of our team’s successes in the accreditation arena include the following:
- Navigating the complex and high-stakes change in ownership and merger processes of a variety of institutional, programmatic, and specialized accreditors.
- Representing numerous physician assistant programs in successful appeals of withdrawn or withheld accreditation by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA).
- Arguing an appeal resulting in a remand of a withdrawal of accreditation to the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC).
- Crafting an appeal strategy for a nursing program, which resulted in reconsideration by the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES) of the negative action prior to the appeal hearing.
- Guiding a private college through the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) application process for a complex campus relocation with Title IV federal student aid implications.
- Defending a career school in an appeal before the Council on Occupational Education (COE) resulting in reinstatement of accreditation.
- Advocating successfully for a good cause extension and reversal of accreditation withdrawal on behalf of a culinary school accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC)
- Assisting institutions with responding to complaints filed with and investigated by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), and other accrediting agencies.
- Supporting a program with preparing a response to a complaint received by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) resulting in no further action.