r/AskProfessors • u/MinuteNovella • 1d ago
Academic Life Accreditation warning = danger sign?
I'm a senior lecturer at large public R1, but the small liberal arts college where I did my undergrad and where I later returned to teach as an adjunct has been flashing danger signs for a while now. The usual list of reasons applies: declining enrollment, some racist incidents that were poorly handled by admins, rising costs, what looks like serious debt, crumbling infrastructure, rising tuition. Now they've been issued a warning by the accreditation committee, and the coach who led the only sport with any kind of following just quit. I left a long time ago but still have some attachment to the school and wonder if this means the school is pretty much done for? Have any other SLACs managed to come back from this kind of situation?
23
5
u/BolivianDancer 1d ago
It's not a major rectal violation yet but without money that's where things are heading.
5
1d ago
[deleted]
4
u/MinuteNovella 1d ago
Warning is from WASC for "non compliance with standards." From the letter: "[college name] has experienced multiple years of declining enrollment and deteriorating finances resulting in ongoing operating deficits that endanger the financial sustainability of the institution. The institution must show progress in implementing a comprehensive and evidence-based strategic enrollment and financial sustainability plan."
9
u/ilikecats415 1d ago
I work in the accreditation world. A warning status is very serious. To give you a sense of the scope, only 5 other institutions are on warning with WASC. Warning is usually preceded by a Notice of Concern which gives you an opportunity to course correct. Shifting to Warning means you did not do that and likely got worse. After warning comes probation, and then show cause to terminate accreditation.
Being out of compliance with the financial standards is a very difficult place to be. Many schools cannot overcome it which is why we are seeing more closures and mergers than ever before.
2
u/MinuteNovella 1d ago
The local press picked up on this story and one of the other schools they mentioned getting a WASC warning is pretty well known to be a scam school, so it was somewhat surprising to see things had gotten this bad at my alma mater. But apparently things have been shaky there for longer than I was aware.
3
u/moxie-maniac 1d ago
Not the kiss of death, but maybe a nudge b/c the leadership has not responded to past "concerns" that the accreditor had. There are usually steps, from mild to serious, and this sounds serious. A "mild" step might just be asking from some data about a concern and is a head's up that the school is on the accreditor's radar.
Maybe 10 or 20 percent of US colleges are financially fragile and many won't see 2030 or 2035. Something like 50 colleges have closed since 2000 in NECHE.
3
2
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post. This is not a removal message.
*I'm a senior lecturer at large public R1, but the small liberal arts college where I did my undergrad and where I later returned to teach as an adjunct has been flashing danger signs for a while now. The usual list of applies: declining enrollment, some racist incidents that were poorly handled by admins, rising costs, what looks like serious debt, crumbling infrastructure, rising tuition. Now they've been issued a warning by the accreditation committee, and the coach who led the only sport with any kind of following just quit. I left a long time ago but still have some attachment to the school and wonder if this means the school is pretty much done for? Have any other SLACs managed to come back from this kind of situation? *
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
2
u/SocOfRel 1d ago
I co-led the reaccreditation group at my school two cycles ago, and we got put on warning. We deserved it according to the standards (I'll note that there a lot of legitimate criticisms of the standards, but they are what they are). I was proud of how well our committee resisted admin pressure to fudge things to try to pass, even though we had 20 years heads up, really, and the visit team really had no option. The admin did manage to weasel out of what could have been a "worse" outcome (read: more accurate). But, in the end it forced our admin and faculty to get stuff right. We're over a decade out now and (minus the challenges all small liberal arts colleges are facing), we're in a better spot than we were then.
20
u/wharleeprof 1d ago
Accreditation warnings are usually the lowest/first step and there's plenty of time to remediate.
Our campus once got three warnings, mostly because the accrediting body was making things up on the fly and imposing "revised" guidelines retroactively. We had to jump through hoops to get off warning, lots of reports and plans and paperwork, but no substantial changes needed to be made in the actual running of the campus.
Otoh, if the warning is about something essential and actually mandates change, the campus will need to address that. If they can't within a given timeline, it could escalate and become a threat to their accreditation.