UNC System President Unveils Plans for New Accreditor

The UNC System announced Thursday that it is working with public university systems in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas to create a new accreditor called the Commission for Public Higher Education. The effort follows high-profile disputes and criticism from conservatives, and it comes after President Donald Trump issued a scathing executive order drawing attention to the process of evaluating schools.

“The vision for this effort really is to offer a streamlined, non-ideological approach to accreditation,” UNC System President Peter Hans told The Assembly in an exclusive interview this week.

In order for students to receive federal financial aid, their institutions must be recognized by an accrediting agency that the U.S. Department of Education has approved. These agencies ensure that colleges and universities meet certain standards for academics, finances, governance, and other functions.

While accreditors have long operated as a largely bureaucratic function without much public attention, they have drawn increased scrutiny in recent years from conservatives, who claim standards mandate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and fail to sufficiently evaluate academic quality. In late April, Trump signed an executive order that allows institutions to change accreditors more easily and for new accreditors to receive federal approval faster.

Hans first hinted at the UNC System’s plans at a Board of Governors meeting in May, saying that he was discussing creating a new accreditor with other public university systems. Hans and Dan Harrison, the system’s vice president of academic and regulatory affairs, told The Assembly this week that the new body would focus on student success and academics, which could include metrics such as the return on investment for academic programs.

Hans said partnering with other state university systems would allow the accreditor to focus less on areas where there is already state oversight, such as finances. It will take at least two years before any new accreditor gets formal recognition. Hans gave few other details in the interview, including how much creating a new accreditor will cost.

Ever since Hans’ May comments, which other public universities the UNC System would work with has been a big question—and what an accreditation partnership with other states would mean for North Carolina schools.

While the UNC System has adopted conservative-backed policies on hot-button issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion, Texas and Florida have been much more aggressive in their efforts to reform higher education. The legislatures of both states have mandated changes to curriculum, for example.

“Faculty across the UNC System are very wary of any association with Florida,” said Wade Maki, the chair of the system-wide faculty assembly.

Hans repeatedly said political concerns are not the point of the accreditation effort.

“We’ll be representing North Carolina’s interests and vision, true to our traditions,” he told The Assembly. “Associating with numerous other strong public institutions and engaging in true peer review, that’s going to bolster a meaningful exchange of best practices [that] ultimately support the reputation of institutions that choose to participate.”

While a focus on student outcomes could appeal to faculty, Maki said they will be watching whether the new accreditor’s actions align with that vision—and whether it keeps political interference at bay.

“The proof will be in the pudding,” he said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced the plans at a press conference Thursday morning. DeSantis introduced officials from South Carolina and Texas; Hans was not present. DeSantis spoke for more than 20 minutes about Florida’s efforts to overhaul universities in the state, including weakening tenure and rooting out “activist” professors, before he turned to the “accreditation cartel” that he said forced universities to implement DEI efforts.

“It’ll upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels,” DeSantis said of plans for a new accreditor. “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.”

Years in the Making

Colleges and universities sometimes butt heads with their accreditors, and UNC System schools are no exception. In 2023, the system’s current accreditor, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACSCOC, publicly questioned whether the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees violated standards with the creation of the School of Civic Life and Leadership.

Not long after that, North Carolina passed a law requiring public colleges to switch accreditors every 10 years. Florida had passed a nearly identical law a year earlier following its own high-profile clashes with SACSCOC.

Hans told The Assembly that he had been thinking about accreditation issues for years. He served on the Board of Governors and ran the N.C. community college system for two years before taking his current job, and the General Assembly’s move was part of his motivation to act.

He said he has been in touch with counterparts in other states over the past few years about the possibility of creating a new accreditor. Talks took on a more “serious tone” late last year, he said, and the partners began to hash out details.

Still, his May comments came as a surprise to some higher education observers. His comments—which offered sparse details—came on the heels of a report that pointed to accreditation requirements as the predominant reason universities requested exemptions to the system’s new policy suspending DEI-related requirements.

In the interview with The Assembly this week, Hans maintained that he is “laser-focused on academic quality and student outcomes.”

“That’s my motivation,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

Hans said he expects a “fairly significant number” of additional states to be interested in joining the new accreditor in the future. 

“I think it will be appealing to many states to consider this option,” he said. “I can’t project to you today whether that’ll be one, two, or 10—but true peers.”

‘Genuine Peer Review’

Under the 1965 Higher Education Act, accreditors must evaluate 10 broadly defined areas in assessing an institution’s quality: student achievement, curriculum, faculty, facilities, fiscal and administrative capacity, student support services, recruiting and admissions practices, program length, student complaints, and compliance with federal laws on financial aid.

New accreditors must go through a two-year trial period to test their processes and standards before they can become federally recognized. That means UNC schools would remain with an existing accreditor while applying to be recognized by a new one.

“We intend to move out and demonstrate our new processes in that two-year runway so that we have a very, very strong case for recognition at the end of it,” said Harrison,  who is the System’s lead official on the project. 

Typically, membership institutions pay fees to fund accreditors. Hans said universities currently spend millions of dollars every year on staff and accreditation processes. Universities will continue to pay their membership dues with current accreditors pending the new agency’s approval, and Hans said the state university systems will cover the new accreditor. It is unclear whether state legislatures will provide designated funding for the accreditor later on. 

“We’re not asking them [universities] individually to front membership dues until we have something to offer by way of federal recognition,” Harrison said. “If they want to join us and go through this process, we want to make those barriers to entry—those financial barriers to entry—as low as possible.”

While the initial cohort for the new accreditor consists of only public, four-year universities, Hans expects that community colleges will also be invited into the fold. The North Carolina Community College System has not been involved in discussions at this point, Hans said. But he pointed out that the community colleges are also bound by state law to change accreditors every 10 years, so the new accreditor would “be an option open to them.”

“We’re going to follow a normal process—that existing legal and regulatory structure—for creating a new accreditor so we can return to the original vision of accreditation as a form of genuine peer review,” Hans said, adding that it would be “by public institutions, and for public institutions.”

Erin Gretzinger is a higher education reporter at The Assembly. She was previously a reporting fellow at The Chronicle of Higher Education and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. You can reach her at erin@theassemblync.com.