In Praise of the Commission for Public Higher Education

Complaints about the Commission for Public Higher Education’s (CPHE) proposed solutions to accreditation problems are unwarranted.

This October, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article titled “Will the Commission for Public Higher Education Be a ‘Serious’ Accreditor?,” voicing concerns about higher education’s most recent innovation.

The Commission for Public Higher Education was formed in response to traditional accreditors’ lackluster performance. Touted most famously by Ron DeSantis, the CPHE, a brainchild of six Southern university systems (including the UNC System), aims to “advance the quality and improvement of higher education by accrediting … state public universities that are incorporated, chartered, licensed, or authorized in the United States.” The first cohort of CPHE applicants was announced at a recent Florida Board of Governors meeting. North Carolina’s applicants are UNC Charlotte, App State, and NC Central.

Accreditors have been accused of using poor review standards, failing to ensure positive student outcomes, and enforcing DEI. The CPHE was formed in response to traditional accreditors’ lackluster performance.

America’s seven federally recognized accrediting commissions determine whether a college or university meets preset standards concerning “student outcomes, responsible governance, and continuous improvement.” American higher-learning institutions must be accredited before they can receive federal funding, making the seven commissions powerful gatekeepers.

Unfortunately, the commissions have been frequently accused of using poor review standards, failing to ensure positive student outcomes, and enforcing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s indoctrination policies. Moreover, the cost of college keeps rising, yet we haven’t seen a corresponding increase in students’ return on investment. Accreditors have done little to arrest this trend.

Additionally, accreditation isn’t cheap, costing institutions on average between $11,000 and $35,000 per year.

The CPHE promises better. Its three core principles address the incumbent accreditors’ shortfalls:

• A return to true peer-review—for publics, by publics: Public Universities share similarities in governance, financial models, and mission that make them peers of one another to a much greater degree than an institution from another sector that happens to be geographically close.

• A focus on student outcomes, not inputs: With a focus on transparent, publicly available data, CPHE will be a partner, not a hindrance, to governing boards and other policymakers who seek to emphasize student outcomes.

• A reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy, opacity, and expense: CPHE will meet the requirements to achieve recognition as an institutional accreditor by the U.S. Department of Education. In doing so, it will leverage the fact that its membership is exclusively public to build more efficient standards and procedures.

This is outstanding news for higher education if the CPHE can deliver on its principles. Yet not everyone is optimistic.

Some are concerned with the CPHE’s allegedly broad accreditation standards. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a legacy regional accreditor, sent a long list of criticisms to CPHE, voicing concern that its standards are “operational in nature without specificity about the fundamental purpose of accreditation—ensuring excellence in the quality of educational offerings for students.”

Various faculty groups also question the standards’ alleged vagueness and worry that this will hinder effective reviewing.

But perhaps the main reason why much of academia is skeptical of the CPHE is the new accreditor’s conservative background. A statement from the United Faculty of Florida (UFF), for instance, worries that the CPHE will play the role of thought police. Teresa M. Hodge, president of the 25,000-member body, opined,

This proposed state accreditor appears designed to align more with political priorities rather than academic independence. It seems to be the state’s latest attempt to exert top-down control over what faculty can teach and what students are allowed to learn.

The CPHE is beginning its institutional life facing entrenched skepticism. Yet this skepticism is unfounded.

It is hardly fair to criticize the CPHE’s operations when it has barely begun its institutional life. That is like calling an under-construction house ugly. Of course the house may not be pretty now; what we’re seeing is not the finished product.

It is hardly fair to criticize the CPHE’s operations when it has barely begun its institutional life. The CPHE was announced this June; most of America’s legacy accreditors date back to the late 1800s. Institutions need time to hire the right leaders, make connections, assemble teams, and implement processes. Then they need experience to test their operations, see if their strategies work in the real world, and pivot if needed.

The CPHE has barely begun the long process of institutional development. It has weeks to the legacy accreditors’ decades of experience. It isn’t reasonable to act as if the CPHE were an established accreditor, let alone expect set-in-stone accreditation standards.

It is the CPHE, not the faculty associations, that will bring real intellectual diversity to campuses. In other words, it is too early to pass judgment. The CPHE needs time and experience to mature.

As to worries that the CPHE’s conservative origins and leadership will stifle intellectual diversity, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

We all know that American academia is hugely liberal and that other viewpoints are regularly silenced or “canceled.” The late Charlie Kirk’s campus Q&A sessions made this fact clear. When the AAUP and UFF complain about preserving academic freedom or “politicizing accreditation,” they aren’t interested in a real toleration of different ideas. They worry that the CPHE could loosen their chokehold on the worldviews taught in colleges. It is the CPHE, not the faculty associations, that will bring real intellectual diversity to campuses.

According to Standard 13 of the CPHE’s current accreditation standards, the new accreditor will review colleges to ensure that “the institution’s policies and practices support the intellectual diversity of its faculty and students in academic and co-curricular life.” Groups truly concerned about academic freedom have nothing to fear from the CPHE.

As the CPHE takes its first steps as an accrediting body, it will continue to face stiff opposition from the voices and interests that have dominated American universities for the past decades. But their complaints lack merit. The CPHE, far from being a flimsy stifler of academic freedom, will bring real improvement to higher education.

Keller Moore is a 2025 Carolina Cardinal fellow at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.