TALLAHASSEE — Higher-education leaders Friday backed a plan to form a new accrediting agency that Florida will help fund and oversee with university systems from five other states.
The Florida university system’s Board of Governors approved creating the non-profit Commission for Public Higher Education, which would be an alternative to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a longtime accrediting agency that has clashed with Florida education leaders in recent years.
Board of Governors Chairman Brian Lamb said the planned accreditation agency is at the “seed funding stage,” with Florida putting up $4 million.
“We should probably think about the roadmap over the next three, six, 12, 18 months,” Lamb said. “There’s a lot of questions we have got to answer around how we’re going to operate this entity.”
Anticipating legal action against the accrediting agency, Board of Governors member Eric Silagy expressed reservations about setting up the organization with unaddressed questions.
“I’m really concerned about the structure not being in place from day one that will mitigate undue legal risk,” Silagy said.
“It is truly a startup that, right off the bat, will have millions of students and hundreds of thousands of faculty and billions of dollars directly affiliated,” Silagy added.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has taken numerous steps to make Florida’s higher-education system more conservative, and officials from other states last month announced plans for the agency. Other participants are university systems in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Florida university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said there is a “unique unity” among the six university systems.
“The Commission for Public Education will offer an accreditation model that prioritizes academic excellence and student success while removing all ideological bias and unnecessary financial burdens,” Rodrigues said.
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Accreditation plays a critical role in making colleges and universities eligible for students to receive federal financial aid. But Florida in recent years took steps to move away from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which is often known as SACS, and battled in federal court with the Biden administration about accreditation.
Robin Goodman, a professor of literature at Florida State University, questioned DeSantis’ reasons for wanting to switch accreditors to one that is “politicized in ways that it’s not now.”
“That just seems like a bad decision and will make our universities not as great as they are now,” Goodman told the board.
But board member Kimberly Dunn said it’s important that the new accreditor can’t “impose divisive, ideological concepts” on schools.
Board member Ken Jones called the plan “the right path” and a “great policy move,” “given what’s transpired the last few years with SACS and other accrediting agencies.”
The new commission is expected to have leaders, including a board of directors, and staff members by October, with an accreditation model set up by December. It will have to receive approval from the U.S. Department of Education to be recognized as an accreditor.
“A new accreditor typically has two years to prove it is operating in accordance with federal regulations to receive federal approval,” the commission’s business plan said.
The business plan, however, also cited a White House executive order in April. The plan said the White House “expressed its intent for the Department (of Education) to ‘realign accreditation with high-quality, valuable education for students’ and to accelerate the recognition of new accreditors.”
Florida will provide $4 million for the commission, and other state university systems are expected to make similar contributions through funding or in-kind work, according to the business plan.
Florida is the first to approve money. University systems in North Carolina and South Carolina have identified staff to provide in-kind work for the commission.
The commission’s long-term funding is expected to come, in part, through annual membership fees from participating schools.
“Additional funding may be provided by education-related philanthropic organizations, private entities, corporate sponsors and the federal government (in the form of grants),” the business plan said.
In 2022, the Republican-controlled Legislature and DeSantis approved a bill requiring public universities and colleges to periodically change accreditors. That followed concerns raised in 2021 by SACS about then-state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s candidacy to become president of Florida State University. Corcoran, who also is a former state House speaker, did not get the FSU job but is now president at New College of Florida.
Florida in 2023 filed a lawsuit against federal education officials challenging the constitutionality of the accreditation system, arguing, for example, that “Congress has ceded unchecked power to private accrediting agencies to dictate education standards to colleges and universities, and it has forbidden the U.S. Department of Education from meaningfully reviewing, approving or rejecting those standards.”
But U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra last year sided with the Biden administration and dismissed the lawsuit. Becerra wrote that Florida could “seek to change the law in Congress, provide its own funding to students attending its schools, or compete in the marketplace without the use of federal funds, just to list a few examples. But this court is only empowered to look at the facts as they are plead, not rhetorical conclusions, and then apply the law as it exists, not as the state would like it to be. By those lights, what the state presented, at least in this complaint, cannot stand.”
The state appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case remains pending.