European-American University™

An anatomy of the war between the regional accreditation agencies and their supporters, and the independent private sector

Preface
This article discusses events in education from a United States perspective with some wider thoughts for good measure. The phrase "self-regulating" is used to describe for-profit or non-profit institutions that have not sought or gained regional or national accreditation in the United States from an accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or Council on Higher Education Accreditation. This sector is distinguished from those institutions that hold regional accreditation, although some of these are also in the "private sector" in that they are controlled by shareholder capital or operated by private for-profit or non-profit concerns.

Although the term "unaccredited" is often used to describe these institutions, we are concerned that this term has become politicized by the public sector, describing "lack of accreditation" as a negative where in fact there are several positive reasons why an institution may choose not to seek accreditation. In addition, it is highly inaccurate to apply the term "unaccredited" to foreign institutions in countries where there is no system of accreditation applicable to that category of institution. Our search for a more neutral descriptor has led us to the term "self-regulating".

This article does not discuss professional or programmatic accreditation in the United States, and its reference to the national accreditation agencies is peripheral. While there may be some exceptions, it takes the view that these accreditors, unlike the regional accreditors, are not the most substantial part of the problems described.

Introduction
Since the end of the 1990s we have seen a radical readjustment of the relationship between mainstream institutions, in particular those United States colleges that held regional accreditation, and those institutions who for whatever reason were unable to seek or had chosen not to seek such accreditation through the regional agencies (See this earlier paper for a general description of the accreditation process.)

Regional and national accreditation in the U.S. has always functioned as an optional, voluntary process. It is not connected with the legal right to confer degrees, which is the responsibility of individual states' laws. This line has been blurred in recent years, as will be explained below, by the increasing reliance of the states on external regional and national accreditation processes. 

Reasons not to seek regional accreditation range from its high costs, its academically conservative and restrictive nature, opposition to government or quasi-government regulation of universities, and the fact that the school in question may be too small or too unusual to qualify. Some schools at the bottom of the market, including diploma mills, also do not seek regional accreditation because they are of low quality and wish to avoid external scrutiny.

The U.S. Department of Education makes it very clear that the decision by an accrediting agency to seek recognition from the Secretary of Education is optional and tied to a wish to access federal student funds. Only U.S.-based agencies are eligible to seek recognition; foreign-based agencies are not.


The DoE is also very clear that although unaccredited degrees may have limitations on their utility compared to accredited degrees (see later), they "are not necessarily of poor quality",


It is entirely possible that the quality of an unaccredited institution may equal or exceed that of one which holds accreditation. While many unaccredited institutions do not meet that standard, some do, and while the self-regulating sector continues to exist and expand, there is the chance that more will do so as consumer demand fuels greater quality and greater competitiveness in the free market.

Before the period described in this article, relationships between the accredited and self-regulating sectors were more civil than they are today. A number of regionally accredited universities were happy to accept credit transfer and admission to graduate study on an open, case-by-case basis for awards from good quality self-regulating institutions that did not hold regional accreditation, such as some California-approved schools. They did so based on the academic merits of the applicant and the rigor of the program they had completed. Today, the relationship between the regionally accredited sector and the self-regulating sector has changed fundamentally, and its change has been marked by aggression, defensiveness and adversarial tactics on the part of the regionally accredited sector.

Why has this readjustment occurred?
This readjustment has as its cause the growth of internet-based distance education and the fact that this growth along with the development of a significant self-regulating sector has meant major competition for the mainstream.

Gary North has identified the position precisely,


State monopolies are known for their complacency and it is probably no exaggeration to say that self-regulating sector competition in postsecondary education came as a major wake-up call for many. The barbarians were not merely at the gates, they had taken up residence in the citadel and were doing extremely well for themselves. Indeed, the university concept had been wholly transferred to an online environment, with entire virtual universities operating without a campus, tenured faculty or obeying traditional concepts of academic propriety, and were instead adopting a highly commercial focus. This threatened the mainstream's monopoly as a whole, as more students chose self-regulating alternatives over the mainstream, but it was also seen as a threat to the mainstream's own putative or actual distance learning programs. Above all, the mainstream had no effective answer to low-cost, more flexible competition by serious self-regulating institutions. Its financial, bureaucratic and regulatory restrictions prevented it from competing fairly unless its brand was of intrinsic high market value. As a result, mainstream schools began to go out of business and others experienced loss of revenues.

The overall argument is firmly in favor of the self-regulating sector. As Gary Wolfram says,


This is reinforced by the leading Austrian-school economist Ludwig von Mises,


Since this viewpoint is hardly controversial to anyone with even a basic understanding of economics, you might expect that it would be generally recognized in public debate and the value of the private sector would be universally recognized in education. Not so.

The battle to eliminate quality in the self-regulating sector
In the mid-1990s, just as the Internet started to become a presence in most people's lives, Columbia Pacific University, a self-regulating, distance-learning only institution that was approved by the state of California but not regionally accredited, was the largest distance learning university in the United States measured by student numbers, with high student satisfaction ratings, many established academics on faculty, and a dynamic profile built on program innovation and flexibility at low student cost. Elsewhere, serious and innovative self-regulating institutions such as Greenwich University (Hawaii, then Norfolk Island) and Fairfax University (Louisiana) showed that there was genuine quality to be had outside the mainstream, and indeed that the self-regulating sector could lead the market through its adaptability and entrepreneurial spirit. The radical approaches of Summit University of Louisiana and American Coastline University (Louisiana) gave many adults the opportunity to earn a degree based on their prior learning and community resources.

None of the institutions mentioned in the preceding paragraph now exists in any recognizable form. Columbia Pacific and Greenwich were the victim of extensively biased reports by state authorities protecting mainstream interests, whose intentions were to stop them from operating altogether - effectively to kill off the competition. Both reports claimed that they did not meet the quality standards imposed by the mainstream, prompting a robust rebuttal from both schools that was largely ignored by the media. The CPPVE - the body that closed Columbia Pacific - was itself closed shortly afterwards by Governor Pete Wilson, who cited a pattern of "reprisals and vindictiveness" in its behavior. Fairfax was prevented from awarding anything but degrees in religious fields in Louisiana. Summit survived only under another name, again as a purely religious school and by moving state to Wyoming. American Coastline changed ownership and management, left the U.S. and now appears closed.

But the mainstream was aiming to do more than this. The whole concept of a successful, innovative self-regulating sector had to be discredited, and wherever possible those institutions in it had to be coerced to accept the restrictions and impositions of accreditation or removed from the market. The attack was explicitly on those institutions in the self-regulating sector whose standards and market appeal were sufficiently high to challenge the accredited cartel.

The accreditation cartel and its ideology
The war that was thus declared by the regionally accredited lobby was to be brutal in its effects and to be presented to politicians and the media as the united consensus of the mainstream education sector supposedly fighting for quality and standards - but actually fighting for turf and for the perpetuation of the academic conservatism that enabled them to maintain their existing lifestyles at the taxpayer's expense, regardless of value for money, pedagogical justification or market needs. Of course the mainstream differs from the self-regulating sector in that tenured faculty's interests are served first, with the student relegated some way down the line, regardless of the fact that it is the student who is the consumer and is often paying dearly for the product. At self-regulating schools, on the other hand, unless you serve the student's needs first, you don't stay in business.

Gary Wolfram points out that there are other costs to the mainstream - such as intellectual independence,


This is a point reinforced by Murray Rothbard in "Education: Free and Compulsory"


Ludwig von Mises adds,


What is more, the accreditation cartel works on the basis that standardization and conformity in education is a good thing - as if the role of colleges is to produce a uniform "product", not to facilitate a humanistic process of growth. Accrediting agencies standardize as their very business. Because they are conservative and run according to the views of the academic and political establishments, they reject schools that are too innovative, too competitive, too radical, that disagree with their social policies - or that are simply not big or rich enough to afford their substantial fees. The idea that education is as diverse as human nature; that a degree has meaning only within an institutional context (the correct historical argument) rather than as a universal construct; the idea that one might prefer a program that was individually-based to a cookie-cutter product - all these are rejected by the accreditation lobby. Forget it, they say - your educational world isn't safe unless Big Brother sanitises it for you - and gets rich on taxpayer dollars in the process. In the words of James D. Koerner,


Legal changes resulting from the accreditation cartel's lobbying
During the past ten years, almost every single state in the United States, under pressure from the regional accreditors and the schools they accredit, has passed legislation or amended existing legislation to stop unregulated secular self-regulating postsecondary educational institutions from operating, and to require its schools to seek and gain accreditation or to close. In particular, the government has interfered to stop the conferral of degrees on the basis of significant prior learning assessment or credit transfer, which is the single major area where there is greatest demand but least supply (since the regional accreditors will not permit this methodology to form the entire basis of a degree award except for a few isolated programs at bachelor's level, and few permit it at all at graduate level). Several states in the U.S. now attempt to make it illegal to use a degree that does not have what they deem to be acceptable accreditation, even if it was conferred legally by an institution approved or licensed by another state.

The argument put forward is always an attempt to prevent diploma mills from operating. Yet the resulting legislation always manages to target not only diploma mills but legitimate self-regulating schools that do not wish to seek accreditation. This is not a coincidence. The accreditation cartel sees the opportunity to use consumer protection as an excuse to eliminate its competition, and to promote the defamatory slur that there is no distinction between legitimate self-regulating schools and diploma mills.

Such attempts at explicit coercion have not surprisingly been subject to legal challenge on the grounds that they are unconstitutional, and thus far they have not stood up to that challenge, with several major reversals being inflicted on behalf of particular institutions (see below). Some of the institutions that have been targeted by the accreditation lobby have relocated abroad or been fortunate to be "grandfathered in" and not affected by the new legislation requiring accreditation. But the most prominent institutions of quality in the U.S. self-regulating sector have been wiped out or forced into the accreditation process, thus giving up their independence and distinctiveness and accepting the values of the mainstream. The same position continues today. In 2006, Wyoming abandoned its independent scheme of licensing for self-regulating institutions and required them to seek accreditation. In 2007, two of the few relatively liberal states left, Alabama and Mississippi, are reported to be considering new legislation to ban unaccredited schools. Even now in California, there is debate as to the future direction of the most significant independent self-regulating sector left in the United States - a sector that comprises 1,800 schools and serves around 400,000 students. There is certainly big money at stake.

Anatomy of the war
How, then, has this readjustment been brought about? Here are the main tactics revealed:

1. Lobby the Legislators
It's not hard for a large and wealthy trade association such as a regional accreditor to wield influence with lawmakers. Indeed, once lawmakers are persuaded that they must act "to protect the state's universities from diploma mills" it's hard to get them to see that there's another side to the argument. The legislator sees the state universities on the one hand and the diploma mills on the other. What he or she doesn't see is the legitimate self-regulating schools in the middle, because they are generally few in numbers, small, isolated, and do not have access to the lobbying resources of the accreditation cartel. Equally, it is difficult - but certainly not impossible - to produce a catch-all definition whereby legitimate self-regulating schools are protected and illegitimate schools eliminated. As distance education writer John Bear has said, "one man's diploma mill is another man's alternative university."

Like any trade association, the accreditation cartel's aim is a monopoly for their members, the elimination of competition, and the reinforcement of their values as dogma. What the state fails to comprehend is that this monopoly is harming educational innovation and reducing choice. Even if the self-regulating sector is more full of low quality than good quality schools, its preservation is vital in order to prevent the loss of education to an unelected, unaccountable elitist monopoly that has done nothing to assure educational standards.

Consumer protection arguments in favor of this action unfortunately serve to disempower the consumer. Without the choice of legitimate self-regulating schools, the consumer is being denied education that meets their needs at a low cost, and can only choose institutions whose high tuition costs reflect the high costs of the accreditation process and its requirements. This reduces choice for the consumer to the point where education becomes unaffordable, and the preserve of the elite - a position which suits the academic establishment all too well.

Legislators today are all too ready to pass "knee-jerk" laws that are a disproportionate response to isolated events. It is not hard to point at a particular case of failure or disreputable practice involving diploma mills and to use this as propaganda to "prove" that such situations are endemic within the self-regulating sector and thus that that sector must be eliminated, regardless of the truth or general applicability of this assertion. This is precisely the tactic of the accreditation cartel. They rely on the fact that legislators are not going to have the time or expend the effort to challenge their assertions - or will simply decide that challenging them is not in their interests.

Some of the members of the accreditation cartel spend a great deal of money on lobbying the federal government. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the University of Phoenix, the largest regionally accredited school in the U.S. (and a leading provider of distance learning programs), spent a total of $450,000 on lobbying during 2003. UoP is one of the most aggressively marketed and openly competitive institutions in the market today, despite serious concerns being raised about its quality and educational model. A 2004 Department of Education report concluded that the university "systematically operates in a duplicitous manner."

Currently at federal level there is action underway that threatens educational independence for those seeking federal employment. The Democrat H.R. 773, succeeding H.R. 6008, is an explicitly protectionist bill that threatens to reinforce the monopoly of the accreditation cartel and further stigmatize and criminalize the graduates of legitimate schools not holding such accreditation for the purposes of federal employment in the U.S. It proposes the setting up of a "diploma mill task force" not dissimilar to the dissolved FBI DIPSCAM, but as ever does not make the necessary and all-important distinction between diploma mills and legitimate self-regulating schools that do not seek accreditation.

2. Play the Quality Card
Here's James Koerner again,


Every time governments or their acolytes interfere in the market, they do so on the grounds of "maintaining quality" and "protecting the consumer from diploma mills". Yet how true are those claims? Regional accreditation does many things - it creates powerful trade associations, it raises costs for the student, it wields power in terms of access to federal funds. Yet the one thing it doesn't do is assure quality. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ralph A. Wolff, President and Executive Director of the Western Association of Colleges and Schools (a regional accreditor) admitted,


Accreditation examines inputs, not outputs, and is not a substitute for quality assurance. It says that if x, y and z are in place, you should get a good education. And when it examines an institution to see whether that's the case, its report is usually confidential and not available to the public. That report in turn has been prepared purely through the incestuous process of peer review - in which a school is judged solely by other schools, not by employers or consumers. No wonder, then, that the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), in the only major external study of government-recognized accreditation in the United States in recent years, concluded,


Returning to the subject in 2007, ACTA commented,


It is certainly true that there are many institutions of low quality in the self-regulating sector, just as there is a spectrum of quality in any free market. The tactic has been to seize upon the worst examples of bad practice in these and use them to tar the entire self-regulating sector with the same brush. The argument has been put forward, for example, that accredited schools are acceptable and those without accreditation not, because 80% of accredited schools are good against 20% bad, while in the self-regulating sector these figures are reversed. What this sleight of hand ignores is the relative size of those sectors. Since the accredited sector is much larger than the self-regulating sector, the comparison is not as favorable to the accredited sector as at first sight it appears.

The campaign has used - indeed virtually invented - the terms "degree mill" and "diploma mill" as the chosen denigratory epithets, but confuses real diploma mills - schools that sell degrees for little or (usually) no work - with legitimate self-regulating schools. Its aim is to use the word "unaccredited" - by which it means not regionally or nationally accredited, notwithstanding that the institution may be accredited by an accrediting agency that is not recognized by the DoE or CHEA - and the term "degree mill" as synonyms, and to convince others that there is no such thing as a good unaccredited school. An exception is generally made for new schools which realistically intend to seek accreditation once eligible - those which intend to conform to the cartel's values.

As a result of this, serious self-regulating schools find themselves lumped by the campaign into the same category as degree-selling merchants, with the implication that they are involved in the same sort of practice. This is a particularly dirty smear campaign, and it is notably characterized by the lack of evidence generally brought forward to back such slurs. Those making the accusations often do not have the time or resources to investigate the schools concerned. Their primary interest is in convincing the public that the decision not to seek accreditation is always for no other reason than the wish to sell substandard degrees. As a result, a broad-brush approach is taken, with the whole "unaccredited" category - in the definition established by the campaigners - subject to defamation as "diploma mills". This ignores - very conveniently - self-regulating institutions of quality, or indeed isolated examples of quality in self-regulating schools that do not manage always to live up to that high standard as a whole. What is more, it is more than likely that a self-regulated sector will itself bring forth new institutions of quality that do not exist at present, and force the standards of those already in the market up, through fair competition and consumer demand for high standards. To suggest otherwise presupposes a remarkably bleak view of human nature and a lack of understanding of how market economics works.

Because this is a campaign, and because it is being backed by one particular monopolist, the same focus is never turned on the accredited sector. It comes as little surprise that every criticism levelled in the media at academic practice in the self-regulating sector can be equally applied to certain regionally accredited institutions. Sometimes, people are surprised to learn that there are regionally accredited institutions that grant bachelor's degrees wholly on the basis of prior experiential learning (the "BA in 4 Weeks" schools), that do not have physical library facilities (University of Phoenix, which itself has been called a diploma mill), or that operate purely online with no campus (Jones International University). There are also numerous accredited schools - quite often the for-profits - whose standards are low and which produce a steady stream of student complaints, and a number of well-documented degree-selling scandals over the years. The untold story of the regionally accredited cartel includes those who gained degrees without significant work, widespread corruption as the regional accreditors essentially function as a club for members to self-certify, and all manner of restrictive, educationally unsound practices designed to disempower students and junior faculty.

Dr. Richard J. Bishirjian of Yorktown University (now a candidate for national accreditation) has commented on the nature of these political games,


Much further information on the issue of accreditation and quality, or the lack thereof, is provided by the Florida Higher Education Accountability Project (FHEAP), which is detailed further in our Resources page.

3. Get the Media to Join the Party
The media have been shown to be utterly complicit in this campaign. Certain journalists, indeed, have been among its greatest advocates. Headlines about diploma mills and fake degrees sell newspapers and make for effective investigative journalism and TV in a way that headlines about good self-regulating schools and their graduates getting on just fine simply don't.

The legitimate self-regulating sector has effectively no access to the mass media. Because it consists mainly of a limited number of small institutions working in isolation from each other, it lacks the money and political influence of the accreditation cartel, and in addition the authoritarian anti-market bias of many journalists and media outlets means that its message is unwelcome in any case. On the other hand, the accreditation cartel has developed cozy relationships with the media and can easily persuade it to run its stories. Although the press has a duty to hold the establishment to account, it has systematically failed in that duty in this issue. Instead, it has too often become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the establishment's vested interests.

The style of reporting used in coverage of this topic gives rise to serious concern. There is a strong reliance on expert opinion, but the choice of those experts and the selective quotation from what some of them have said is designed purely to support the accredited cause. There is also a tendency to rely on sensationalism and the use of sting operations and other deceptive means to gain "information", which is often then presented in a severely distorted and biased form.  It is striking that these disreputable practices are at best highly ethically dubious, yet a hallmark of media presentation is the lofty moral tone taken throughout by the accreditation cartel. It is as if they believe themselves to be genuinely untouchable and unaccountable to anyone other than their vested interests.

The democratizing influence of the Internet has posed a challenge to the accreditation cartel, since most self-regulating sector institutions have websites, some of which are highly sophisticated and a few of which address some (but rarely all) of these issues. One response has been for the cartel to use websites which are willing to promote their cause, and in turn to promote these sites among lawmakers and opinion-formers. Another has been to encourage activism in their support, as seen in the colonization of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the site Yahoo! Answers and similar online fora to ensure that their group has a monopoly over prominent outlets of information and can relegate opposition on the grounds that it represents "minority viewpoints". The aim behind this is the systematic manufacture of consent, whereby the cartel's assumptions are seen as universal dogmas and are not subject to credible challenge - a tactic familiar from the former Soviet Union.

4. Shut the Independents Out
At the beginning of this paper, we outlined that in previous generations it was relatively common for some regionally accredited universities to accept credits and degree awards from self-regulating institutions on a case-by-case basis, and based on the credibility of the work done there. The former International College in California, a high quality unaccredited school with many famous faculty that later went out of business, routinely had its credits accepted because of the quality of its faculty. The cartel's campaign has meant that this practice has generally been much more restricted as the cartel has closed ranks, although some schools in the cartel still publish that they will consider unaccredited transfer credit, always on a strictly case-by-case and probationary basis.

The campaign has also made much capital out of encouraging the public to judge self-regulating institutions on the basis of whether their credits will transfer to schools within the accredited cartel, knowing that it has taken steps to ensure that they largely will not. This obviously ignores the possibility that some will not wish to undertake further study within the accredited cartel, either continuing their commitment to the self-regulating sector at graduate level or alternatively considering their formal, degree-based education to be complete at the level they have already reached. It further proves that the accredited cartel is not interested in educational quality, since it is not prepared to judge the individual by the standard of the work they have done but merely by the status of the institution they have attended. As the DETC, a nationally-recognized accrediting agency, says below, "The sine qua non of an institution's quality is not if its credits transfer: this is a false premise."

It goes without saying that collaboration with the self-regulating sector on any other issue is now also explicitly rejected. Much is made of a self-regulating institution "not being part of, or recognized by, the academic community" - the phrase "academic community" being used inaccurately to refer only to the accreditation cartel. Learned journals and other academic resources are often persuaded to supply their product only to cartel institutions, thus betraying what should be a commitment to scholarship, not to a commercial monopoly. Yet all this has little bearing on the value of an educational experience that is undertaken by distance learning and is thus rooted in the student's own community, not that created and controlled by the university. A growing band of independent scholars is starting to make an impact on the edges of mainstream academia, and the spread of information via the Internet is likely to increase this band in both numbers and influence.

Interestingly, the nationally-recognized Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), which is required by the Department of Education to meet the same standards for recognition as the regional accrediting agencies, has also made reference to being affected by these tactics in respect of the transfer of its own credits and degrees to regionally accredited schools. In its FAQs, DETC says,


5. Attack the Graduates
This is surely the most reprehensible aspect of this campaign. Since its outset, the campaign has been noted not merely for its lack of civility but for its constant resort to personal attacks in the online and offline media on graduates from, and those otherwise involved in, self-regulating institutions. Graduates have been subjected to smear campaigns, innuendo and harassment because of their choice of self-regulating institutions, and the media has not been interested in balance or opposing arguments.

The coverage has taken several angles, the most common being to denigrate the graduate because of a particular incident or aspect of their school. The desired implications are that graduates of all self-regulating institutions are fraudulent, disreputable and should be dismissed from their positions, whether or not the self-regulating institution they have attended operates with integrity. The suggestion is made that they have gained an unfair advantage over accreditation cartel graduates, often because the non-traditional educational methodology used in their degree programs has been assessment-based and focussed on outcomes and results of learning, rather than the accreditation cartel's insistence on process before all else (the "time-serving" aspect of education). This focus on process rather than outcome is a further instance of a concern not with education or the quality thereof, but of the control of the education process and thus the reinforcement of power in the cartel's hands.

Most graduates are targeted because of their prominency (on the basis that this will interest the news media) and the combination of self-regulating sector graduates in public sector positions is seen as an ideal target (see our references to legislative action concerning federal employees above). The intention is to intimidate and to ensure that others who would consider the self-regulating sector are put off from doing so and instead driven into the arms of the cartel's own schools, or in the worst case scenario told that they might as well not trouble to get a degree at all than earn one in the self-regulating sector.

In situations of employment, this behavior is clearly close to tortious interference, but in practice it is rare (but not unknown) to see legal action taken. Several recent court judgments have shown that targeted graduates of low-quality self-regulating schools can succeed where they can show that their degrees were earned as a result of substantial work, regardless of the lack of overall quality of the school where the degree was earned. However, most graduates - indeed most schools - do not analyse deeply enough to understand this war for what it really is. And because the accreditation cartel is generally hidden behind the scenes rather than being a direct participant in the process, it is able to avoid the responsibility that it properly bears.

One move by the accreditation cartel has been the creation of lists of "forbidden" degrees in particular states. These consist of lists set up with the explicit intention of protectionism for the accreditation cartel and the furthering of the campaign by discrediting the self-regulating sector, always with the pretext of protecting against diploma mills, always failing to make the distinction between diploma mills and good unaccredited schools. These lists usually seek to comment on non-U.S. providers as well, despite the lack of any serious investigation of the quality of such institutions and the lamentably poor resources allocated to their investigative processes. Instead the fact of their independence is used to produce an automatic implication of low or no quality, with their non-membership of state education systems often the only verified fact about them. Some of these lists have been tempted to go further than simply listing institutions, adding derogatory comments. And sometimes the lists get it wrong, as on the several occasions when accredited institutions have been added to the lists only for those listings to have to be removed or adjusted later.

Although those charged with administration of these lists are often singled out for (sometimes just) criticism, in reality it is the legislation that underlies them and its monopolistic intent that should provide the real target for opposition. Legislative change in this area is both essential and urgently needed to avoid injustices such as the two case studies below, where those who had earned legitimate degrees from unaccredited or foreign-accredited schools found themselves unfairly in the firing line:


Berne University, incidentally, subsequently lost its accreditation in St Kitts and consequently access to U.S. federal student funding for its short-residency program there - problems that, however, do not invalidate the status of degrees earned while it was accredited. Indeed, the withdrawal of accreditation indicates that St Kitts accreditation is not the meaningless construct suggested above. Today, it continues as Bernelli University, a domestic U.S. university based in Virginia, and is a current applicant for U.S. regional accreditation.

Similar and equally draconian laws to Oregon's existed in Florida from 1988. They were declared unconstitutional in 1995 and have not been replaced. It is worth noting that on the two occasions when the Oregon list has been subject to formal legal challenge or the threat thereof, it has suffered defeat (Benton vs. Svejar/Contreras, discussed below; Kennedy-Western University vs. Contreras, settled out of court, discussed here). Dr. Donald Erickson comments, regarding the Benton case,


Note that in both cases the schools in question (Berne University and Bob Jones University) were credible institutions without U.S. accreditation (BJU has since made a successful application for national accreditation, 79 years after the university opened, but is still not regionally accredited). It is credible institutions offering real education that are targeted as a priority by the cartel. Those at the bottom of the market - the true diploma mills - are seen as less of a problem because they are not obviously trying to be "real" schools and are thus not direct competitors for the cartel.

One attractive option for graduates is the scope the Internet offers to put their case in their own terms without censorship. This is an emerging strategy at present, but one which may well grow in time.

6. Attack the Schools
Once a school puts its head above the parapet, and particularly if it scores a point or two against the cartel, it is targeted, trouble is made for it, and it is not too strong a term to suggest that revenge may be sought upon it (see Berne University above). This ranges from smear campaigns disseminated on the Internet and the media to activism aimed at having the school closed down.

Often the attack is indirect. "School x was included in an article on diploma mills" - even though the article did not call the school a diploma mill. And schools which had previously won high praise (such as Columbia Pacific) are now denigrated by the very people who had once praised them highly.

The cartel is banking on the fact that few schools will take legal action in the U.S. Foreign schools cannot usually do so in any case unless they additionally have a U.S. base. If a school does take legal action, it is taking on a giant cartel with a great deal of money and political influence. The cartel banks on the mostly small schools that it targets not wanting to expose themselves to such a situation of risk, even when they know themselves to be the victims of injustice.

7. Trust Us - We Know Best
Since Oregon set up its list, several other states have simply copied its contents and relied on them as if they bear some form of legitimate authority, which they most certainly do not (see Benton case above). Because the area of private sector education is complex and difficult to understand, and because few have the time or the access to information to enable them to understand the issues in depth, the cartel has had easy work in persuading others to simply leave it all to them and not worry about trying to get to grips with such matters. By failing to take a balanced view, decision-makers, such as employers, colleges and lawmakers, abdicate their responsibilities and fail those they claim to serve.

An employer who demands a degree for a position should be able to assess for themselves whether the candidate that presents themselves at interview has acquired the necessary knowledge and experience that his or her degree represents. Otherwise, that employer has no business demanding the degree in the first place.

8. Spread the Word
This is an article principally about the United States. However, because the U.S. cartel is also facing competition from foreign private-sector schools operating over the Internet, this campaign is now spreading beyond the U.S. to other countries. We have recently seen illiberal action in British Columbia, Canada, targeting a long-established self-regulating non-profit institution (Vancouver University Worldwide). That very institution - which was runner-up to New York State University in the 1997 Khaladjian Award for educational innovation - continues to display photographs of BC's senior politicians endorsing it at convocation ceremonies just a few years ago. Australia, often a surprisingly conservative country, now makes it illegal to work for any foreign or domestic institution of postsecondary education not approved by the Australian government. Other countries are being prompted and driven by the same forces and provided with the same rent-a-quotes for their media coverage. Few, if any, make the case for the self-regulating sector or indeed suggest that a solution is not its elimination but its encouragement (which does not have to be in the form of government regulation), which in itself will result in improvements in quality. Then, because that case is not made, the consumer is left disempowered and short-changed, because their options have been artificially restricted to a choice between the members of a club whose rules are set permanently in their own favor.

There are moves afoot to standardize universities and their degree awards on a global basis, prompted by the confusion between education and vocational training promoted by governments for whom postsecondary education is a part of their social engineering program rather than being valued for its own merits. This aim threatens cultural diversity as well as making academia even less responsive to individual needs than it is at present. It aims to end consumer choice (except to the point where it becomes a choice between different shades of gray) and to subject all institutions to the deadening hand of excessive and unnecessary bureaucracy. It also aims to bring about a blanket re-labelling of legitimate educational difference as "educational fraud", again failing to distinguish between self-regulating institutions of different quality and simply attacking the entire sector as a means of protectionism.

This movement needs to be shown for what it is, which happens all too rarely at present, and it needs to be resisted strongly. Contrary to its claims, its actions will not raise quality - like all state monopolies they will instead lower quality and stifle innovation. It will make academia into the tool of the statist authoritarians on a permanent basis. And it will deny individuals their right to the educational choices that are appropriate for their particular beliefs and abilities. As Friedrich Nietzsche so succinctly put it,


Conclusions
There is a need for fundamental change in the relationship between the accreditation cartel and the self-regulating sector. However, this process of change is likely to be characterized by a high level of conflict and adversarial conduct. This is because the only realistic long-term scenario is that the cartel will lose power to the self-regulating sector. How much of that power is lost depends on the degree of success of the strategy outlined above, which aims at effectively shutting out the self-regulating sector on a global basis. But if even some power is ceded, some public sector institutions will continue to fail and close, no matter how much the state tries to prop them up. Others will voluntarily move from the accredited to the self-regulating sector in the interests of their own continued viability - a process that is already beginning with the setting up of unregulated "branch campuses" in foreign countries. The power and influence of the regional accreditors will wane as more people question their purpose and the ethics of their chosen tactics in protecting their cartel. This scenario is unheard of in education at present, but it is almost certain to happen in the future.

It also depends on how willing people of influence are to see their education system sacrificed to a monopoly which is fundamentally opposed to consumer choice except within its own narrowly-defined parameters. And it depends on consumers to sacrifice their rights to low-cost, flexible and individualized educational programs in the face of those who would deny them that option and reserve education not for the academic elite but instead for the rich. Those who stand in the way of the self-regulating sector are presenting a prospect of the universities once more descending to the level that they had reached in the early nineteenth-century - finishing schools for the elitist establishment, complacent, inward-looking, intellectually mediocre and resolutely unaccountable. This is not the vision for the future of postsecondary education that we should allow ourselves to settle for. Free, unrestricted competition in the form of the self-regulating sector is the only way that standards, value for money, diversity and accountability can be assured on an ongoing, stable and permanent basis.