Louisiana Voice

Accreditation.

There is so much about that word that the average person has so little knowledge about.

What does accreditation mean? Who does the accreditation? How is accreditation conducted? Why is accreditation important? Is it important?

To the last question, the answer may vary, depending upon which institution is being evaluated for accreditation. For hospitals, as an example, accreditation is important, even critical. We want to know we’re receiving treatment from an institution that meets the highest standards of care.

For prisons, the value of accreditation is iffy at best. We’ll take a closer look to learn why that is in a follow up story.

For colleges and universities, accreditation is also important in that one should know whether or not he is paying good money to obtain a degree from a reputable institution or just shelling out big bucks to enrich some huckster like Donald Trump and his so-called Trump University (which was forced by the courts to adopt the name “seminar” and to drop “university.”

That, of course, was before the investigation that completely stripped it of any credibility and eventually forced Trump to pay back some $25 million to students Trump had defrauded with his school.

Accreditation or the lack thereof also weeds out other schools and so-called universities which fall short of reaching any degree (no pun intended) of accountability. Those may include business and trade schools that are fly-by-night or schools that call themselves seminaries for the benefit of bestowing Doctor of Divinity degrees to anyone who pays the fees but which aren’t worth the paper the diplomas are printed on.

Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU) might well be a case in point. The university, nestled in Hammond, about an hour east of Baton Rouge, recently was granted accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College (SACSCC). More specifically, it had its accrerditation “reaffirmed.”

But wait. The announcement of accreditation was made in December at the commission’s annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, where SLU President William Wainwright was elected to the commission’s Board of Trustees.

Somehow, that appears as something of a conflict of interests—or at least a too-cozy relationship between accreditor and accreditee. Why would an officer of an institution be a member of the organization evaluating his institution—and pay the organization to be a member in addition to its accrediting services?

According to the SACSCOC’s FEE SCHEDULE, it’s not a cheap process.

• The application fee for membership (payment to accompany application): $12,500.
• Candidacy fee for institutions authorized a Candidate Committee:   $5,000.
• Pre-Applicant Workship (registration fee and lunch per person:  $250.
• Fee and expenses for a Reaffirmation Review: actual travel expenses plus $750
• Review by the Off-Site Reaffirmation Committee:  $3500
• Review by Interim Review Committee (for institution’s Fifth-Year Interim Review: $3500
• Fee for an institution seeking review of a substantive change prospectus or application for level change:  $500.
• Per-SACSCC member fee for a substantive change involving multiple institutions: $500
• Administrative fee for Substantive Change Committee:  $2000
• Actual cost of the Committee (includes travel, lodging, food and related expense for each evaluator and staff and incidental expenses for each evaluator) and Administrative Fee for Special Committee:  $1,500
• Chairs and other members of SACSCOC review committees receive an amount for incidental expenses in addition to their actual reimbursable expenses: $300 for Committee Chairs, $150 for Committee members.

Gov. Landry has tossed out the idea of employing another, or perhaps even creating a new accrediting organization as a way of cutting costs of accreditations.

But other organizations have their own fee structures. For example, the HIGHER LEARNING COMMISSION (HLC) has base dues of $5400, plus 65 cents per student. With an enrollment of 14,400 or so, SLU’s total per-student fee under that structure would be almost $10,000 over and above the base fee of $5400. Plus, there are more than a dozen other fees the HLC keeps in its back pocket to whip out at a moment’s notice, fees that run from $3450 to $10,000.

Having said that, it’s somewhat interesting to note that SLU Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Eric Skipper sent a two-page letter to all department heads at the university on Dec. 17 informing them that they “should plan for at least 30 percent of instructional activity (based on workload hours) to be provided by part-time instructors, including lecturers, graduate teaching fellows (GTFs) and qualified staff members who teach.

To more easily read, click on the + above letter to enlarge. slide bar at bottom of second page to right to see entire page.

A special report compiled by Program in Higher Education Leadership at the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS indicates that a high ratio of full-time to part-time instructors generally translates to higher graduation rates, higher retention rates and more instructor advising.

The same study says that part-time instructors:

• Are less likely to use high-impact teaching practices
• Have less teaching experience
• Spend less time preparing for class
• Have less access to administrative and technical support
• Are less likely to hold an advanced degree

The American Federation of Teachers says that the model faculty and college excellence legislation calls for 75 percent of undergraduate courses in each department o be taught by full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty.

Skipper said in his letter that, “All departments that have graduate programs should be utilizing Graduate Teaching Fellows to the fullest extent possible.”

The base salary for graduate teaching fellows is $4500 for the fall and spring semesters and $2250 for the summer. The base salary for professional services assistants is $12.03 per hour for 20 hours per week, or approximately $3850 for the fall and spring semesters and about $1825 for the summer. The base salary for administrative assistants is $10.46 per hour for 20 hours per week, or about $3350 for fall and spring and $1675 for the summer.

Bear in mind, if you will, the root of all this cost-cutting and economic austerity goes back to The Jindal administration when college budgets were repeatedly cut to the bone in order for Jindal to balance his state budget, brought to the brink of bankruptcy by his insistence on cutting corporate taxes to accommodate his supporters at the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI).

But taxes, budgets and full-time to part-time ratios notwithstanding, it just seems a bit out of kilter to have any public institution purchasing membership in an organization that evaluates that institution. But to have a member of the institution serving on the accreditor’s board and for the institution to be paying the organization of which it is a member for accreditation just seems a bit like buying a sundae from your own ice cream store where you’re always sure to get the flavor you wanted. It’s just too incestuous for a healthy relationship.