Coalition of state attorneys general urge Department of Education to reject accreditor’s application

State Issues Student Lending NYDFS State Attorney General Department of Education

On February 20, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, along with 20 other state attorneys general and the Executive Director of the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection, issued a letter to U.S. Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Betsy DeVos in opposition to an application submitted by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) to regain its status as a nationally recognized accreditor. According to Healey’s letter, which was submitted in response to the DOE’s January request for comments concerning ACICS’ application, “ACICS’ systemic accreditation failures and refusal to fulfill its obligations to students and taxpayers have enabled predatory schools to ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of students. . . . Given the gravity of these failures, the Department should not grant any application for recognition made by ACICS without verifying that ACICS has corrected every deficiency and complied with all Departmental requirements effectively and consistently.” As previously covered in InfoBytes, this is not the first time that state attorneys general have reached out to the DOE concerning ACICS’ actions. The DOE upheld the decision to terminate ACICS’ recognition in December 2016.