Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the governors of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas plan to drastically change public higher education, and they don't want to do it across several years or a decade.
Days ago, our governor announced that the state would join these other states with conservative governors to support the Commission for Public Higher Education, a start-from-scratch accreditation organization recently founded in Florida with a business plan that is specific about part of its intent:
"CPHE will laser-focus on student outcomes, streamline accreditation standards, focus on emerging educational models, modernize the accreditation process, maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality, and ensure no imposition of divisive ideological content on institutions."
I added the emphasis because I want you to be clear that the words are the commission's, not mine.
"Divisive ideological content?" There's no need to guess what that might be. President Donald Trump laid out the plan in an April executive order. In it, he explicitly mentions the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits juris doctor programs; the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits medical doctor degree programs, and The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which accredits allopathic and osteopathic medical residency and fellowship programs, as accreditation bodies that have gone off the rails because they have minimum diversity requirements as a part of ensuring a broad, inclusive and more thorough student education. "The standards for training tomorrow’s doctors should focus solely on providing the highest quality care, and certainly not on requiring unlawful discrimination," the order states.
Landry was clear as he stated his intention while announcing the creation of a 13-member task force to evaluate the move. "This task force will ensure Louisiana’s public universities move away from DEI-driven mandates and toward a system rooted in merit-based achievement,” he said in a statement.
There are six regional accreditation organizations, each serving private and public higher education institutions in a group of states in regions of the United States: New England, Middle States, North Central, Southern, Western and Northwest. They do much of the same things, but they serve their regions with geographic interests. Our state's institutions are accredited in the Southern region by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) every few years, checking to see that they are doing what they say they do in their respective missions with a threshold of quality standards.
A number of conservatives think accrediting bodies are too liberal, progressive, exclusionary and "woke." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called them an "accreditation cartel."
No one makes higher education institutions choose accreditation. No one makes them maintain or pursue accreditation. They know and have reviewed the expectations and standards when they sign up as members and agree to be assessed. It's voluntary. But accreditation does open doors to federal funding.
If a group of educators, education leaders, elected officials or states think there's a better way, that they can do a better job, I'll open my ears and eyes to see what's being proposed — as long as it is for the good of all faculty and students.
Landry and the other governors are starting from a negative position. They want to create an anti-DEI accrediting body as they continue to malign the true meaning and purpose of diversity, equity and inclusion. Why create something new when member institutions have helped shape changes in recent decades along with the Department of Education? Because they don't want to work through any concerns or issues. They don't want to create a new academic accreditation concept. They want to create a new organization with new rules to weaken, then destroy, what's been built.
For 20 years, SACSCOC was led by Dr. Belle Wheelan, a nationally respected educator with multiple degrees, including a master's from LSU and a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. A longtime education, diversity and student advocate, Wheelan served two Virginia community colleges as president and she was Virginia's education secretary before leading SACSCOC. She was tough, but equitable and fair. She announced her retirement last year.
A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., she has received numerous civic and educational awards and recognitions. She did her job with her staff, the Department of Education, different U.S. presidents and the presidents of the member institutions she represented with collaborative discussions and what's sometimes called "negotiated rulemaking." New developments. New directions. New ways of doing things. No surprises.
Trump and Landry aren't interested in that approach. They want to ignore years of mostly peaceful negotiations and rulemaking by getting rid of the Department of Education and welcoming an accreditation body that is making things up as they go.
