David makes a very good point about the desirability of having well-defined standards for financial stability. Nearly two years ago, the Pope Center released this piece written by math professor Robert Blumenthal (then at Oglethorpe and now at Georgia College and State University) making that same point. Given the extraordinary importance that accreditation now has — without accreditation from a federally recognized accrediting body, a school is ineligible for government financial-aid money — schools ought to know exactly what will be treated as an unacceptable financial situation.

The question is not whether St. Andrews is acceptable academically. There is no doubt that it’s at least as good a school as most other liberal-arts colleges. It’s probably better than many others. So why should the shaky financial situation trigger what amounts to the death penalty from the recognized regional accrediting association, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools? If SACS is concerned that the school’s financial difficulties might cause trouble for students, what is the logic in revoking accreditation when that action unquestionably will cause trouble for them by shutting down the school and forcing them to finish their educations elssewhere?

I don’t see a good reason to make eligibility for federal financial aid dependent on accreditation at all. We don’t want to see students blowing federal money on degree mills, but accreditation is not a good indicator that a school is educationally serious and lack of accreditation is not proof that a school is not educationally serious. The DoE should come up with a more reliable method of finding out degree mills and barring them. Better still would be to cut the Gordian Knot and get the feds out of the business of educational financing, of course.