House E&W Committee Votes To Send Two Bills Making Significant Revisions to the HEA’s Accreditation Provisions To the Full House for Passage
Overview
Just moments ago, the House Committee on Education & Workforce passed by voice vote two bills seeking a multitude of revisions to Part H—Program Integrity, Subpart 2—Accrediting Agency Recognition of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended. Below is a brief description of both bills and comments made by Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) in his prepared opening remarks.
H.R. 2516 – The Accreditation for College Excellence Act
This bill, introduced by House Postsecondary Education and Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Burgess Owen (R-UT) and sponsored by nine House Republicans, would prohibit accrediting agencies from requiring, encouraging, or coercing institutions of higher education to either support or oppose partisan political ideology, cultural dogma, or religious belief systems.
Committee Chairman Walberg stated H.R. 2516 “stops accreditors from using political viewpoints such as diversity, equity, and inclusion as a quality standard for institutions. Accreditors should be focused on producing workforce-ready graduates, not injecting woke ideology into our institutions.”
H.R. 4054 – The Accreditation Choice and Innovation Act
This bill, introduced by Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), makes a number of revisions including, but not limited to:
* Providing for the expedited establishment of new accrediting agencies.
* Requiring inclusion of achievement outcomes in the assessment of institutional success by all accrediting agencies.
* Mandating accrediting agencies to have substantive change policies; and
* Adding new Committee Member participation requirements for individuals serving on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity.
With respect to H.R. 4054, Chairman Walberg noted that the “bill requires accreditors to use measurable student-success outcomes, provides an on-ramp for capable new accreditors, and streamlines the accreditation process.”
What’s Next
The two accreditation bills, along with five other legislative proposals the Committee continues to discuss as we provide this real-time update, will move to the full House for consideration later this year. CSPEN will provide more details on both bills on tomorrow’s CSPEN Federal Legislative & Regulatory Update webinar.
During the webinar, we will also briefly summarize other hearings which took place today in the House, provide an update on the status of the Budget Reconciliation negotiations, and a summary of the proposals to be considered as part of next week’s Federal Negotiated Rulemaking. Join us if you can for all of this and more!
