Several for-profit colleges in West Virginia would be affected if the U.S. Department of Education decides to stop recognizing the agency that accredited those schools.
The federal department sent the recommendation to stop recognizing the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the independent board that helps oversee what groups can accredit schools - and decide what institutions are eligible to receive federal money.
Among other issues, federal staff says ACICS - the nation's largest and oldest accreditor of for-profit schools - still needs to address how graduates of the programs it accredits fare on licensing exams, and it needs to clarify and document how it selects the people who are on its evaluation team.
ACICS accredits six institutions and more than 120 programs of study in West Virginia, according it its website. Those schools and program would have 18 months to find a new group to accredit them or risk losing access to federal money. Students at those schools wouldn't be able to use federal student loans or Pell Grants.
West Virginia Junior College in Charleston; West Virginia Business College in Wheeling; Mountain State College in Parkersburg; Valley College in Beckley, Princeton and Martinsburg; ITT Technical Institute in Huntington; and American National University in Princeton and Parkersburg are accredited by ACICS.
Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the West Virginia Community and Technical College System, said 3,400 students in the state attend those colleges.
Officials at those colleges hadn't heard about the recommendation until contacted by the Charleston Gazette-Mail late Wednesday afternoon. Some representatives from those colleges wouldn't offer any comment and others said they were unavailable to speak in time for this report.
"We are not concerned about that, and it is something we do not think will happen," said Beth Gardner, vice president of campus operations at Valley College. "That is something I've heard about before, and we're just confident that it's not going to happen."
Gardner said the school isn't worried because the staff recommendation was an "indictment against the accrediting body," not her school.
"We know that we're a quality school, and the Department of Education will find a path to re-accrediting and transition out the quality schools," Gardner said.
The staff recommendation is not a final decision. After the independent board considers the recommendation, senior officials from the U.S. Department of Education will ultimately decide whether or not to continue recognizing ACICS.
"It's possible if this decision becomes final, they could extend that time up to three years," said Corley Dennison, vice chancellor for academic affairs at West Virginia's Higher Education Policy Commission. "It's sort of a fluid situation right now and so we'll have to wait to see how to react to it."
Data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that 82 percent of all the institutions ACICS accredits are in the bottom one-third nationally for student loan repayments, and 62 percent are in the bottom one-third for earnings 10 years after enrollment.
The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning advocacy group, released a report earlier this month condemning the ACICS for accrediting at least 17 schools that were under investigation or battling lawsuits at the time.
"It is not possible for the public to determine the exact source of ACICS' troubles," the report, prepared by Ben Miller, the senior director of postsecondary education at the center, reads. "The agency refuses to disclose any of its substantive documents related to the colleges it approved that have faced legal action and investigations - nor will it even comment on the specific problems or findings it may have turned up and whether it took any action."
Before it went bankrupt, ACICS accredited Corinthian Colleges while it was facing lawsuits from more than a dozen state attorney generals.
ACICS was first recognized in 1965 under an earlier name, the Accrediting Commission for Business Schools. Over the years, it asked to be allowed to accredit master's degree programs and later institutions that offer programs "via distance education," according to the staff recommendation.
The last review the ACICS received was in June 2011, which found a host of problems and required a compliance report be met no less than a year later, according to the staff recommendation. As a result, ACICS' recognition was renewed for three years starting June 2013.
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-7939 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.