Governor Ron DeSantis said Thursday that Florida will join a few other Southern states in creating a new, less progressive accrediting organization to establish standards for public colleges.
DeSantis stated Thursday at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton that Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas will make up the new Commission for Public Higher Education, with additional states probably joining.
State universities would probably use the new organization in place of the current regional accrediting organizations, like the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which has recently clashed with Republican lawmakers and education leaders after examining the practices of certain state universities.
According to DeSantis, it will disrupt the woke accreditation cartels’ monopoly and give institutions a choice that prioritizes student accomplishment over the ideological trends that have influenced those accrediting organizations over the years.
This is the most recent move in the DeSantis administration’s and other Republican politicians’ attempts to give the state’s schools and universities a more conservative stance. Other actions have included strengthening faculty tenure protections, appointing trustees to college and university boards that closely reflect DeSantis’ vision, prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at institutions, and enlisting Republican politicians to serve as university presidents.
According to DeSantis, it would have been challenging to get the federal government to approve the new organization during the Biden administration. However, he stated that since the Trump administration has prioritized education in many ways, the new commission should be approved.
The panel will concentrate on student outcomes, academic excellence, process efficiency, and the pursuit of quality assurance for public higher education, according to a news release.
On behalf of their students, the statement adds, [the commission] will make sure that colleges and universities meet and sustain academic quality and operational excellence by creating strict, open, and flexible outcomes-based accreditation standards and methods.
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