With American students having accumulated over $1 trillion in debt, tuition financing is a hotly debated issue. But even students who are lucky enough to receive taxpayer-funded help might be getting short shrift.
In recent years, Department of Education accreditors have been more likely to cite money woes than academic shortcomings as a reason for sanctioning institutions of higher learning, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Monday.
The investigation’s authors discovered “that from October 2009 through March 2014, schools with weaker student outcomes were, on average, no more likely to have been sanctioned by accreditors than schools with stronger student outcomes.”
The finding, GAO said, casts doubt on whether “standards accreditors use ensure that schools provide a quality education” and raise concerns about the effectiveness of department management of the accreditation process.
A college or university must be accredited by a Department of Education sanctioned-board for its students to be eligible for federal financial aid. Renewal happens roughly once per decade, and takes into account a wide range of factors, including, curricula, student success, fiscal and administrative capacity, admissions practices, and compliance with federal student aid regulations.
During the GAO study, about eight percent of schools audited by accreditors were sanctioned, and one percent lost accreditation.
Despite the importance of the process and statutes requiring accreditors to account for academic quality, those who actually conducted the oversight told GAO it can be difficult to conduct such tests. Not only is academic quality difficult to objectively assess, but the Higher Education Act prevents the department “from specifying the specific content of accreditor standards,” according to the GAO.
And while department-approved accreditors oversee the assessment, it is generally “conducted by volunteer peer evaluators,” the GAO said.
The GAO also highlighted the department’s failure to use its own evaluations to oversee schools and the officials who evaluate them.
“For instance, Education does not systematically use sanction information to prioritize schools for in-depth review, as required by law,” the investigation noted. It stated that the department additionally neglects to use the information “when it decides whether to re-recognize accreditors.”
The government watchdog told the department it should find “ways to better assess whether creditor standards effectively address academic quality,” and that it should use data it already collects “to better oversee schools and accreditors.” The Department of Education, GAO said, “generally agreed with the report’s recommendations, and noted plans to address them.”
In fiscal year 2013, the federal government doled out more than $136 billion in student aid.
