Goodbye, Belle Wheelan

Over the last 25 years or so, one model of university accreditation has given way to another. Under the old system, colleges submitted to invasive but essentially nonpartisan examination of their finances, academic offerings, and faculty hiring. In so doing they proved their “acceptable quality” to the men and women in charge of student loans and gained access to that great, pulsing federal spigot.

Under the new system, accreditors are themselves political actors, not simply ensuring that universities operate honestly but standing athwart any move that smacks of conservatism or right-leaning reform. Like most progressive triumphs, this turnabout has been the work of many thousands of ideologues, party hacks, and deep-state drones. Yet, to the extent that these busybodies have had a queen, her name is Belle Wheelan.

To the extent that higher-education busybodies have had a queen, her name is Belle Wheelan. Wheelan announced her retirement last June and will step down from public life next month. No one can deny that she’s had an impressive run. The president, by age 40, of Central Virginia Community College, Wheelan went on to lead the six-campus Northern Virginia Community College, not only the third-largest two-year institution in the country but the future professional home of a certain elder-abusing first lady.

Only a saint could have resisted a bit of adventurism in such circumstances. Wheelan is no saint. In 2002, Governor Mark Warner (D) tapped Wheelan to be Virginia’s 11th secretary of education, a role in which she implemented the commonwealth’s response to the ill-fated No Child Left Behind Act. From there, it was a mere hop, skip, and jump to the presidency of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). One moment, Wheelan was an order-taking grunt enacting a hopeless federal “fix” for a term-limited boss. The next, she was atop the higher-ed mountain, in charge of an organization that gatekeeps federal dollars for more than 700 public and private institutions.

Only a saint could have resisted a bit of adventurism in such circumstances. Wheelan is no saint. Though a full accounting of her crimes against neutrality would strain this article’s word count, a few lowlights demand to be mentioned.

• In May 2021, Wheelan brought her influence to bear on the then-ongoing presidential search at Florida State University, arguing that candidate (and former Republican state-house speaker) Richard Corcoran was ineligible due to his membership on the institution’s governing board. According to the SACSCOC chief, Corcoran needed to step down from the FSU board before being considered for the top position. Yet Corcoran was on the board only because, as the state’s education commissioner, he was constitutionally obligated to perform that duty. Given that fact, it is difficult to see Wheelan’s gambit as anything but an attempt to eliminate a conservative from leadership contention.
• When, in late 2022, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper (D) attempted to undermine the Republican legislature’s control of the UNC System, Wheelan made a personal appearance in Raleigh on the governor’s behalf. At particular issue was UNC-Chapel Hill’s planned School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), an academic unit reviled by the Left for its commitment to civil discourse and a culture of free speech. According to Wheelan’s remarks to Cooper’s hastily assembled “governance” commission, UNC-Chapel Hill’s trustees would soon “get a letter [of concern]” from SACSCOC expressing dismay at SCiLL’s creation. Yet such a letter never arrived. Instead, Wheelan confessed the next day that commission chair Margaret Spellings had “asked [her] to mention” Chapel Hill’s alleged malfeasance. The university’s accreditor, in other words, came down explicitly on the side of grasping officials seeking partisan control of the state’s public colleges.
• In both 2020 and 2023, at the height of public debates about the efficacy and constitutionality of campus DEI initiatives, SACSCOC under Wheelan released a tacitly menacing “position statement” urging all accredited colleges to “intentionally cultivate and sustain inclusive and equitable processes.” Behind this gentle language lay a subtle threat. Although your elected officials may be on the side of reform, the statement plainly conveyed, your accreditor believes in DEI.

Perhaps such interference would have been tolerable had SACSCOC cultivated a reputation for excellence under Wheelan’s tenure. Alas, the opposite has been true. As the Texas Public Policy Foundation reported in 2023, SACSCOC-accredited institutions have a worse cumulative graduate-debt-to-earnings ratio than do institutions at all six of the other major accrediting bodies. Though Wheelan’s organization delights in making trouble for red-state public flagships, politically privileged schools (e.g., HBCUs) regularly skate to accreditation reaffirmation despite hideously poor graduation and loan-default rates. In the midst of yet another spat with Florida officials, this time in 2023, Wheelan made the curious claim that “Florida institutions are still my institutions” (emphasis added). One can’t help wondering, however, if the Sunshine State’s higher-ed accomplishments have occurred despite, not because of, SACSCOC’s oversight.

SACSCOC under Wheelan represents the accreditor-as-sovereign model: Bow before her majesty or lose one’s access to the federal dime. In the news this month is a plan by the University of North Carolina and other like-minded schools to create a new accreditor—one that would offer, in the highly suggestive words of UNC System president Peter Hans, “sound oversight.” Though it is absolutely the case that UNC needs an accreditor that is “publicly accountable, outcomes-based, and more efficient and effective in its reviews,” it is difficult to deny that SACSCOC fatigue has played a role in officials’ thinking. SACSCOC under Wheelan represents the accreditor-as-sovereign model: Bow before her majesty or lose one’s access to the federal dime. Red-state universities, meanwhile, are recognizing that the status quo is unsustainable. No longer will the public tolerate campus radicalism spurred on and defended by distant apparatchiks whom no one can elect or vote out.

If that is Wheelan’s legacy, perhaps her two decades as an accreditation honcho have not been entirely in vain. “Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous,” Voltaire is supposed to have said. For 20 years, higher-ed reformers have been granted that mercy.

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.