DeSantis sues feds over college accreditation

If the description of Meatball Ron's lawsuit is accurate it just won't be limited to public universities in Florida. If he wins students of every phony for profit "university" or "college" would be eligible for student loans including a resurrected Trump U.

 

I don't doubt it and suspect the same. But that's not what this is about. It's not a problem with the way accreditation is determined other than it doesn't allow for a Hillsdale curriculum with a heavy Christian fascism emphasis. IOW, they are targeting the valid 10%. That's what they have a problem with

 

So many want united states to be like Europe, their own little country. All for one and one for all, what is that nonsense. Petty little dictators rule.

You’re not the boss of me!

Now get off my lawn, happy hour is over

 

for a guy who hates lawsuits…

 

Paraphrased from an old Econ Textbook: Rocky Mt Bears wake up from hibernation & some will hunt down & eat Marmots. Zoologists were baffled b/c they determined that it was a neg caloric activity. Turns out there are advantages to hunting down the marmots other than calories. So, they could observe something & yet they could not determine why it worked at least initially. The pt the author was making was that things tend to work in conjunction with other aspects of the environment. He used this to pt out the failures of bidness consulting. Consultants would see say an ABC cost system do wonders for firm A & then recommend it to firm B. When it was a spectacular failure at firm B, they had no idea why. Things - info systems, measurement systems, evaluation systems, compensation systems, corp culture & so on - evolve together. Hence, in many cases no 1 person really knows why certain things do & don't work. outside recs tend to be 1 size fits all & more often than not don't work

in my college, accreditation involves deans from 3 other schools coming for about 3 days, looking our shit over & telling us what's working & what we need to change. They have no clue, but feel obligated to make us do "something". 90% of their recs are wasteful & 90% deal with peripheral crap rather than anything important - they told us that not enough of our students studied abroad & we needed to address it (?!?!?!). They come every 5 years & the same dean never comes back. You just end up getting told to do crap from people with no knowledge or vested interest in the faculty, students, etc. Your faculty don't socialize enough - we now have a people committee. We created a pos & spend $100,000s to create our own study abroad office (the uni has 1). We now have 10 people in career resources, a sustainability officer, a DEI assoc. dean & on & on & on. jacks up costs, doesn't serve students & the periphery further swallows the core.


Edit. This is how much they care about shit that matters. A certain % of courses must be taught by SA fac (peeps with a PhD & actively doing research (metrics are spelled out)). Accreditation is every 5 years & despite the data being readily avail, this % is only counted for the year they come. Hence, you could have cats & dogs teaching for 4 years & then get your aces in for 1 & that’s what we do but even worse MBAs & the like cover courses

 

Having gone through accreditation recently at the university, college, and department level I can assure you that it doesn't work that way ricky.

 

How so? I don't doubt there's an element of truth here, but accreditors are not politically oriented from my experience.

 

accreditors = the fed?

 

It’s majority blue tax payer money. He with the most gold rules.

 

Thank you for the thoughtful response.
The below link was helpful to my understanding. It seems that the peer review process you are describing is the “private process” and not the feds. Thoughts?

College Accreditation in the United States-- Pg 1

 

my thought is I don't know any more than the process I described....maybe the fed 1 is more behind the scenes. I sure it applies to us, but our college is very entrepreneurial & we generate about 80% of our own revenues. I do know by taking less gov $, we don't have to put up with as much BS

 

Now this is interesting and I have no reason to doubt it. I face accreditation from the departmental and university level, but even more crucially through our university's Ed Dept - state approval for teacher licensing is basically another form of accreditation. On a departmental level, we take more gov money because the arts are expensive. Then there is the Ed Dept angle, which is pretty balanced due to the combo of education disciplines, not to mention that we supply the schools with teachers. I'm less familiar with U-wide accreditation, as I have yet to serve on one of those committees or faculty senate. That will likely change soon. From a departmental perspective and we just had our site visit in March, we looked to our accreditors for support from our college and with good cause. I'm looking forward to sharing some of their findings with our Ed Dept. My gig is a bit unique in that I am housed in the discipline and also work closely with the College of Ed. I am "privileged" to contribute to accreditation processes in both units.

 

We've been in the distance game forever. It's very lucrative. We've been doing it since the days where lectures were given & DVDs were cranked out all night & mailed out to 1000s of students around the world the next morning. The former dean made a very risky move, by making a deal where we keep a larger % of the profits in exchange for next to no uni money. That + a differential tuition deal means we are pretty independent...financially.

Our dept went to the trouble of forming a formidable advisory committee (old grads, recent grads & mostly big timers from industry) & the college has 1 as well. That is far more beneficial than any thing accreditation folks have offered.

 

Ron doesn’t like privatization unless the state pays his friends.

 

Say you were writing an NSF research grant, would accrediting be mandatory (I assume yes).

 

Ronnie sure does love wasting taxpayer dollars.

 

At the K-12 level, accreditation is a joke. The agency comes for 1-5 days, takes a look around, and signs a certificate. Any school can put on a dog and pony parade for 1-5 days.

Not sure if it’s the same above K-12. Not political, just not necessarily effective.

 

Only people getting free money are the illegal aliens crossing our boarder illegally. Ever other working American has paid "their fair share" into the system of taxation. Again, the money DC controls in not theirs...

 

Okay as I’m reading all this the U.S. Department of Education isn’t telling Florida they can’t follow the Florida law regarding accreditation, but they are saying if they want federal funds then they need to use the Federal Government’s chosen accreditation association which is the Southern Association. As a result Governor Oompah Loompha went into his patented tantrum dance and is suing. I’m not sure what the government is doing he says is unconstitutional because he can still do what he wants with Florida education but he’s going to have to do it on the state’s own dime.

To me it’s like North Korea expecting funds from the United States so they can spread more anti -American propaganda.