Actually two Atlanta colleges recently lost their accreditation. Morris Brown College lost its last spring due to financial shenanigans. It is accredited by the Southeast Regional agency. It’s an HBCU so the loss of federal student aid is a huge hit. It is still going this year and hoping to come back, but it only has a couple hundred students now and many of those are somehow working off previous tuition debt. (I have no idea…) It is pretty much a goner.
Life University lost its accreditation in chiropractics by the national chiro. board. Since this was the main thing of the school, it was also bad. Lots of polictics, I think it became a branch of a California chiro. school but the founder, Sid something, is gone.
Georgia Tech almost lost the accreditation for its Mech. Eng. program back in the 80s since they weren’t upgrading to computers like they were supposed to. Would have been a major embarassment if it had happened. In this case, it’s the national mech. eng. professional group that monitors this.
In my field, Computer Science, there was an extremely lame attempt to start accreditation in CS in the 80s. It’s a terrible system and an unnecessary onus. (Our then-chair was on the board so we had to get it. Now they can’t “lose” it so it’s a huge headache every couple years. The ex-chair is completely loathed, even by new faculty how never met him.) It’s intended for the West Onionbreath State College level schools. Almost no top 30 department has it. (If they do, it’s for the reason I gave before.) But since the Idiot Provost has heard about accreditation in CS, she wants CS to get it, we explain why it’s dumb, etc.
Speaking of the Idiot Provost. There are minor reviews every couple years, but she messed that up big time and we were forced to go thru a major review. Huge amounts of time and paper were wasted on that. Like I said, an Idiot but thankfully now gone.
Note that k-12 schools are also accredited. I believe by the same agency as the colleges in our area. One county school system is being run into the ground in the name of politics and has been warned about losing accreditation. But the politicians don’t care. If that were to happen, the high school diplomas would be worthless for things like getting into most colleges, scholarships, etc.
Non-accredited universities provide some people with the skills and knowledge they desire for personal growth. This is especially true with religious training and non-mainstream politically driven institutes.
Some universities shy away from accreditation processes because they entail a lot of accountability and openness regarding financial data, faculty policies, and community relationships. Some schools don’t want to pay any cost, especially to some outside authority, especially when the school feels like it is the one true path to knowledge. Many non-accredited schools are making too much money doing things their own loose way–accreditation would impose expensive requirements. Many non-accredited schools are degree mills.
Accreditation agencies are all private, non-profit in nature. The US government, however, keeps tabs on both the various types of accreditation agencies and the schools they accredit. Student loans and research grants are supposed to go only to accredited institutions. In addition to diploma and degree mills, there are also a slew of accreditation mills. It gets pretty ugly and criminal.
John Bear is the expert in the field of distance learning. This site is very authoritative about accreditation, distance learning, and the associated politics and legal jazz.
When Christian fundamentalist colleges and ‘universities’ don’t want to deal with ‘government interference,’ or, are so academically anemic that they could never get accredited, they then have two options: forego accreditation, or get accredited by some no-prestige agency and proudly proclaim to be accredited.
There can also be a vicious circle when setting up a new institution. In Boston, for example, a new law school was started in the late 80s, with some provisional acceptance from the local legal community, but no full accreditation. (I don’t recall the details of the Bar exam that allowed this, but in the late 70’s you could take the Bar in my county after working for a sponsoring law firm, and not attending law school at all)
The education provided by the school was not necessarily badly thought of, though there were serious questions about (for example) whetehr it provided adequate support for all its students. When students begain to graduate, and the school still wasn’t accredited, the whole deal fell apart. Still, the curriculum was considered good enough that most all of the school’s students were ‘adopted’ by other law schools and took the bar after just one or two semesters of delay.
Many people still feel that Massachusetts needs another law school, and there has been periodic lobbying for UMass to create one.
These documents are for SACS accreditation, but all of the other regionals are pretty much the same. Our next SACS “visit” is in 2007, and we’re already anticipating the self-study!
RealityChuck and Cranky have provided a pretty good overview of accreditation. If you want to find out more, visit the web sites for the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) or the US Department of Education. These two organizations are in charge of recognizing American accrediting organizations, so in a sense they ensure that the standards used by different accerditing agencies are uniform and meaningful. For instance, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which accredits engineering programs (I’m familiar with them because I’m an ABET program evaluator), is recognized by CHEA. Of particular use, CHEA has a page devoted to informing the public about accreditation.
These pages might give you some more info, if you’re interested. From a CHEA pdf: