College-accrediting agencies supposedly ensure educational quality. They seldom actually do that, but increasingly they use their muscle to compel schools to go along with their ideological visions.
In today’s Martin Center article, Todd J. Williams explains what happened at Cairn University, where he serves as president. The trouble centers around the university’s long-standing Social Work program. That program was accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Several years ago, the CSWE began to make life miserable for Cairn’s program.
Writes Williams, “These issues concerned both CSWE’s specific requirements, standards, and criteria, and its trajectory on social and cultural issues. The university considered these measures to be an example of accreditation overreach and deemed CSWE’s requirements incompatible with the school’s religious and theological commitments.”
For one thing, CSWE demanded faculty-to-student ratios that were inflexible and quite burdensome for the small school. It’s impossible for a graduate to get into the field of social work without a degree from a CSWE-accredited institution, and that gives the accreditor tremendous leverage.
Then came the ideological demands. Williams continues, “In 2021, CSWE released a draft of highly politicized accreditation standards and criteria that delineated its expectations for curricula, student outcomes, and program ethos. This move further represented a degree of outside control that Cairn viewed as overreaching and untenable.”
When Cairn reached the decision to close its Social Work program, CSWE felt the need to denounce the university.
Williams concludes, “What is clear is that CSWE was not satisfied in this case with the education of students and the good things that thoughtful accreditation bodies can do. Instead, it demonstrated an unacceptable level of overreach and a disregard for any notion of institutional sovereignty. This is, as Cairn decided, untenable. Institutional missions and distinctives will never be protected if private colleges do not draw a line and say, ‘This far, and no farther.’”