Accreditation and Transfer-of-credits
Many for-profit institutions of higher education have national accreditation rather than regional accreditation. Regionally accredited schools are predominantly academically oriented, non-profit institutions. Nationally accredited schools are predominantly for-profit and offer vocational, career, or technical programs. Many regionally accredited schools will not accept transfer credits earned at a nationally accredited school.
In the 2005 Congressional discussions concerning reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and in the US Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, there have been proposals to mandate that regional accrediting agencies bar the schools they accredit from basing decisions on whether or not to accept credits for transfer solely on the accreditation of the "sending" school. They could still reject the credits, but they would have to have additional reasons.
The American Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), a nonprofit organization created for the purpose of accrediting for-profit schools, supports the proposed rule. It and other nationally accrediting institutions and have been lobbying for it for some time. The ACCSC claims regionally accredited schools will not accept nationally accredited schools credits for purely arbitrary, prejudicial and/or anti-competitive reasons. It further states that, since the Department of Education recognizes both national and regional accreditation, there is no reason for regionals to differentiate between the two and to do so amounts to an unwarranted denial of access.
The position of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) is that national accrediting standards are not as rigorous and, though they might be well-suited for vocational and career education, they are ill-suited for academic institutions. AACRAO alleges that this proposed rule is unnecessary and unjustified, could threaten the autonomy and potentially lower the standards of regionally accredited schools, and drive up their costs. Furthermore, it states the proposed rule is an attempt by the for-profits' "well-funded lobbyists" to obscure the difference between for-profits' "lax academic criteria for accreditation" and non-profits' higher standards. AACRAO claims only six percent of American students attend for-profits and only four percent attempt to transfer to non-profits. Eduventures, Inc, a Boston research firm, states that nine percent of all U.S. college and graduate students attend for-profit institutions.
Admission representatives at Crown College (Tacoma) and Florida Metropolitan University allegedly made various misrepresentations concerning the transferability of their credits to entice students to enroll in those schools.
Several of the larger for-profit schools have sought and received regional accreditation, including the following:
- American InterContinental University
- The Art Institutes
- Art Institute of Pittsburgh
- Capella University
- DeVry University
- Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM)
- Heald College
- ITT Technical Institute
- Kaplan College
- Kaplan University
- Miami International University of Art & Design
- National American University
- Pittsburgh Technical Institute
- Post University
- Strayer University
- University of Phoenix
- Universal Technical Institute
- Walden University
Read more about this topic: For-profit Education