AFT Local Files Complaint against Accreditation Agency

The faculty union for City College San Francisco has filed a complaint against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits all California Community Colleges.

According to an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education,

The complaint accuses the commission of taking improper actions at the City College of San Francisco and argues that those actions are part of a broader pattern of malfeasance affecting community colleges throughout the state, where the commission has issued either sanctions or warnings to 27 of the 112 community colleges.

The full complaint can be found on the California Federation of Teacher’s website, who point out,

 [I]n the view of CFT, the accrediting agency is in violation of federal and state law and its own policies, and has overstepped its authority in a number of ways.

CFT suggests that the Department of Education must take the information in the complaint into account in its own review of the ACCJC’s authority to accredit colleges.

This is worth following, because the ACCJC of course will be visiting Cerritos College next year. Its critics charge that the agency has overstepped its mandate, sanctioning colleges much more frequently than any other accreditor in the country.