Florida cooperates with university leaders from five other southern states to form a new higher education accrediting authority, Gov. Ron Desantis and officials of the other states announced on Thursday.
The Commission for Public Higher Education, which needs federal approval, would be an alternative to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a long -term accreditation agency that has been clashing with Florida -education leaders in recent years.
“We want to concentrate on real, serious academic strictness. We want to concentrate on things that really matter, things that are permanent. We don’t want to waste someone’s training,” said Desantis during an appearance at the Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Other participants are university systems in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Accreditation plays a crucial role in being eligible for students for students to receive federal financial assistance. But Florida has taken steps in recent years to leave the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which is often known as SACS, and fought in the federal court with the Biden administration on accreditation.
In 2022, the legislative power controlled by the Republicans approved a bill that requires public universities and colleges to change accreditors periodically. That followed the concern that SACS fueled by SACS in 2021 about the then educational commissioner Richard Corcoran’s candidacy to become president of Florida State University. Corcoran, who is also a former speaker of the Staatshuis, has not received the FSU lane, but is now president at the New College of Florida.
In 2023, Florida brought a lawsuit against federal education officers who dispute the constitutionalness of the accreditation system and, for example, claim that “the congress has not been checked to the competence of the private accredited agencies to dictate educational standards at colleges and universities.
But the American district judge Jacqueline Becerra chose the side of the Biden administration last year and rejected the court case. Becerra wrote that Florida ‘could try to change the law in the congress, to provide his own financing to students who visit his schools, or compete on the market without the use of federal funds, simply to mention a few examples. But this court is only authorized to look at the facts, not in the state, what the state would be, not as the state. Complaint cannot stand. “
The State appealed to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case remains in anticipation.
Desantis, who tried to reform Florida’s higher tuning system to become more conservative, emphasized a need on Thursday to get the new accreditation committee approved while President Donald Trump is in office. He said the Trump government supports the proposal.
“The reality is that if it is not approved and at the time, we can let a president come in and possibly withdraw it, and they could probably do that very quickly,” Desantis said. “If we get this done … I think almost all states in our region will be beneficial for this.”
Desantis criticized what he called the ‘monopoly of the Wekacreditatiekartels’, of which he said it is ‘not what the state wants to see Florida reflected in his universities’.
Chancellor Ray Rodrigues from the state university system stated that the current accreditation process wastes time “Checking the compliance trade and managing the details of bureaucracy, with very little focus on real, actual academic excellence.”
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