Policy Sense and Nonsense

Edward Abbey, the American author who died in the late 1980s said “There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.” Over the last couple of years I've been engaged in a debate which proves Abbey's aphorism.

All states have what are called licensure statutes for educational institutions. Some license both public and private institutions; some only license private institutions. Twenty years ago California had a notorious statute which allowed all sorts of nefarious institutions to operate with impunity. As a part of the Master Planning process, I did a report on the issue of licensure and found that one institution, authorized under this statute offered a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry without anyone on the staff who had had even one course in Chemistry. Part of the new Master Plan for Higher Education created a new statute which tamped down that kind of silliness. The new statute eliminated the prior standard which allowed any institution with $50,000 in assets to operate with a state license and substituted a new series of regulatory requirements. But the state also created an exemption for private institutions that were accredited by the regional accrediting agency. The logic of that proposition was sound. Regional accreditation is a process by which the quality of an institution is judged by peers in higher education. In California public and private institutions are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). WASC is a human process but actually encourages institutions to think about the quality of what they do. There is a lot of discussion by critics that accreditation does not do everything for everybody (and that is true) but it does a pretty good job of separating wheat from chaff. The WASC exemption was in place with a very simple (and correct notion) - why duplicate a process that exceeds any one that the state could create?

A couple of years ago the statute began a process of periodic review. There was some pretty good evidence that the regulatory framework had not worked as intended. While the $50,000 institutions were chased out of the state, the review by the state bureau in charge of this program was lax. The consumer attorneys wanted to extend the reach of the regulations to include WASC accredited institutions. They captured the process in the start and were able to modify the exemption (which was one of the pieces of the legislation that functioned pretty well). But the draft was also troubling from a number of other views. It mushroomed to a several hundred page monstrosity.

The first time the bill got a serious hearing it was held up in the committee. A GOP assembly member (Roger Niello) who had been put on the committee temporarily drafted a much more straight forward alternative - but the leadership in the Assembly would not give his proposal any serious consideration. We finally clarified the language on WASC accredited institutions to have a clear and unambiguous exemption. But there were lots of issues left in the bill. For example, what should the state do about the institutions that operate branch campuses in California but are accredited by another regional accrediting agency (there are six regionals across the country)?

The process here was not a very good one. And the Governor realized that. Ultimately, next year, what needs to be done is to write a much more simple regulatory structure. The Act should try to accomplish three things. First, it should establish a system which regulates bad behavior and encourages good for those institutions which are not yet accredited. Second, it should continue the principle that recognizes the value of regional accreditation. Third, it should decide how much regulatory oversight should be done for regionally accredited institutions that are not recognized by WASC. In my mind that is not a large bill - it is fairly simple.

The Governor was right to veto the existing measure - let's hope that next year the legislature will act with alacrity to pass a more reasonable measure.