The University of North Carolina System will join five other Southern states to form a new accreditor for their public universities.

The effort is a first-of-its-kind endeavor that comes as accreditation has become a hotly debated topic in higher education in recent years.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has been an outspoken critic of the current accreditation landscape, made the announcement at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

In addition to the UNC System, which includes all 16 of North Carolina’s public universities, the other founding systems and universities are: the State University System of Florida, the Texas A&M University System, the University System of Georgia, the University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee System.

The new accrediting agency will be known as the Commission for Public Higher Education.

The move will see North Carolina enter a formal partnership with states — notably Florida — where higher education has become highly politicized in recent years as conservative policymakers have exerted more influence on colleges and the systems that oversee them. Among other topics, accreditation has been targeted in those efforts.

UNC System President Peter Hans, who first mentioned the proposal at a Board of Governors meeting last month, emphasized that the agency will only accredit public colleges.

In a Monday interview with The News & Observer, Hans argued that state schools already have “many layers of oversight and regulation” — from the systems that oversee them, as well as state legislatures — that private schools may lack. For public colleges, Hans said, the accreditation process should apply a “public-interest standard.”

“We need an accreditor that understands that environment, can work well with our public universities, and really, most importantly, one that’s focused on academic quality and student outcomes,” Hans said. “That’s the most important role for an accreditor.”

Accreditation, which the U.S. Department of Education says is meant to “ensure that institutions of higher education meet acceptable levels of quality,” is crucial to several facets of university operations. Perhaps most notably, that includes federal student aid; in order for a student to receive such aid, they must attend an accredited school.

It’s likely to take at least two years for the new organization to become recognized by the Department of Education, which approves the agencies that are authorized to accredit schools around the country.

While the effort will launch with six states as founding members, Hans told The N&O he anticipates the accreditor “being an appealing choice” for others to eventually join, too.

Recent debates, criticism of accreditation

Accreditation has historically been thought of as an administrative task meant to ensure universities meet certain educational and financial standards, among other areas defined in the federal Higher Education Act of 1965.

But in recent years, the accreditation process and the agencies that oversee it have been subject to increased debate.

The criticism has come mostly from political conservatives at the state and federal levels, who have called the traditional regional structure of accreditors a “monopoly” — or a “cartel,” as DeSantis said Thursday — and denounced diversity, equity and inclusion standards that some accreditors require schools to meet. (The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACSCOC, which currently accredits all schools in the UNC System and others across the South, does not have DEI standards for its members.)

The new effort will “upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels, and it will provide institutions with an alternative that focuses on student achievement, rather than the ideological fads that have so permeated those accrediting bodies over the years,” DeSantis said.

Amid the debates, there have been major shifts in federal accreditation rules — particularly under President Donald Trump.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of Education eliminated the geographical boundaries regional accreditors were previously confined to, allowing universities to use accreditors outside of the agencies they had historically used. The department also made it easier for new accreditors to gain recognition from the Department of Education.

The changes were generally intended to foster competition among accreditors and give universities more choices in deciding where to seek accreditation, said Antoinette Flores, who is currently the director of higher education accountability and quality at left-leaning think tank New America and previously oversaw accreditation issues in the Department of Education during the Biden administration.

Now, during Trump’s second term, he again has made accreditation a focus — signing a sweeping executive order in April directing the Department of Education to make it easier for schools to change accreditors and to “resume recognizing new accreditors.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon supported the order, saying in a statement that “America’s higher education accreditation system is broken.” Hans previously endorsed McMahon, a New Bern native, for her appointment as education secretary in a letter to U.S. senators.

The order, and the broader political climate in Washington under Trump, is likely to offer a boost to the establishment of the new commission.

“Fortunately, under the Trump administration and under Secretary Linda McMahon, they believe in overhauling this accreditation process,” DeSantis said. “They want to have new blood in the system. They want to be able to have competing accreditors.”

State-level changes to accreditation

There have also been changes to accreditation requirements at the state level in recent years — perhaps most notably in North Carolina and Florida.

Both states used the new federal accreditation rules, in which schools can use accreditors outside of their traditional regional boundaries, to justify enacting laws that require their public universities to switch agencies every time they seek accreditation. Typically, accreditation cycles are eight to 10 years long, though the process often involves mid-cycle reports.

Both states clashed with SACSCOC over issues including academic freedom and shared governance prior to lawmakers approving the nearly identical directives.

In North Carolina, the clash involved SACSCOC and UNC-Chapel Hill, where the Board of Trustees in 2023 approved a controversial plan to establish the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the university. Faculty leaders said they were not meaningfully consulted on the plan for the school ahead of the trustees approving a resolution on the matter, which ran contrary to the generally accepted idea that faculty oversee the university’s curriculum.

Weeks after the trustees approved that proposal, the president of SACSCOC, Belle Wheelan, criticized the board and raised questions about whether the university might be in violation of the agency’s accreditation standards because of their actions, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

Months later, North Carolina lawmakers approved the law on accreditation.

Hans told The N&O Monday that the law “asked us, essentially, to look at the alternatives” to the UNC System campuses’ longstanding accreditor. In turn, that became an impetus for establishing a new accreditor.

“It was clear that a new approach would be helpful, and there were other states thinking along the same lines,” Hans said.

With the new accreditor established, Hans said he is “hopeful” the state legislature will amend the current law so that campuses no longer have to switch accreditors, or at least not as often.

“I believe the legislature will be receptive to that idea, provided there are quality alternatives,” Hans said. “And that’s our hope, to establish one.”

Asked whether he had concerns with SACSCOC’s accreditation process, including ideological ones related to DEI, Hans said: “I’m focused on the future, not litigating the past.”

“We appreciate the long engagement with SACS,” Hans said. “I just believe a new alternative, and associating with other strong public institutions that engage in true peer review, will lead to meaningful exchange of best practices and prioritize the outcomes that are most important to our students, and not go beyond that.”

The new accreditor will be an institutional one, overseeing accreditation at the university level. It will not accredit individual graduate programs, Daniel Harrison, the UNC System’s vice president for academic and regulatory affairs, told The N&O.

What a ‘streamlined’ accreditation process could look like

Hans, in his remarks on the topic last month, criticized the current accreditation process as a “cumbersome, expensive, time-consuming burden,” especially for smaller universities with fewer resources than their larger counterparts.

Flores, of the New America think tank, said the majority of costs campuses incur during accreditation come not from fees the accreditors charge, but rather from the “staff time” required of universities during the process.

On Monday, Hans did not offer a specific dollar-figure for the amount of money campuses in the UNC System spend on accreditation each year, noting that costs may vary depending on where in the decade-long process each campus sits at a given time. But he estimated that it amounts to “millions of dollars.”

“Some schools have permanent staff dedicated to this,” he said.

Wade Maki, the chair of the system’s Faculty Assembly, offered similar concerns about the current approach to accreditation.

“We spend a considerable amount of money and time on accreditation, and the time is even bigger than the money, because it’s sort of a hidden cost,” Maki said.

It’s unclear how, exactly, the new process will be different. But Hans noted that public universities already undergo a significant amount of scrutiny and monitoring, particularly when it comes to their financial statuses. The new agency’s approach should “complement, rather than duplicate,” those efforts, Hans said.

Leaders say the new agency will focus intensely on student achievement and academic quality.

“We will establish rigorous, transparent and adoptable, outcomes-based accreditation standards and practices,” DeSantis said. “This will ensure that colleges and universities meet and maintain academic quality and operational excellence on behalf of their students.”

To further support that effort, Hans said, any costs that universities save under the new process could be redirected to “the academic mission at the campus level.”

Maki said he and other faculty hope the new process will bring “less bureaucracy, less unnecessary paperwork” while “giving us more time and resources to spend on the classroom and on students.”

Possible risks with new accreditor

But the new accreditor could bring risks to the universities which choose to affiliate with the group, Flores noted, depending on how the agency is organized.

Accreditation agencies are membership-based organizations. Under the federal rules expanding the geographical boundaries of regional accreditors, and the state laws in Florida and North Carolina, universities are given at least some semblance of choice in deciding where to seek accreditation.

But with the new agency, formed by the systems directly overseeing campuses that are seeking accreditation, it is unclear whether the universities will be given any choice in the matter.

“If the institutions are required to be accredited by this new entity that is closely aligned with the states, it undermines the intent of accreditation, which is an independent review of institutions that ensures quality,” Flores said.

Hans did not directly say whether UNC System schools will be required to obtain their accreditation from the new agency once it is fully recognized.

“The goal is, again, to make it so highly appealing that the choice will be clear for our public universities,” he said.

Aside from the question of choice, Flores warned of possible quality-control concerns for whichever campuses join the accreditor.

“If you are accredited by an agency from your state system, would the agency ever deny you accreditation, or is it a given?” Flores said. “If you are not meeting standards, or there are issues at your institution, are you ever at risk of losing accreditation?”

The new effort could also pose reputational risks, given the links it will create between the UNC System and states like Florida.

That’s something that’s on the mind of faculty, in particular, Maki said — though he noted the possible benefits of the new approach could outlast any political debates accreditation is currently swept up in.

“Our primary concerns are about ensuring that we’re maintaining the reputation of our institutions, the academic quality of our degrees, that we’re not inviting additional political interference — either from legislators or accreditors,” Maki said.

On that issue, Hans said he believes the new accreditor “will offer a streamlined, nonideological approach.”

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