RALEIGH (July 25, 2025) – UNC System President Peter Hans on Thursday defended the system’s efforts to create an accreditation agency it likes.
For decades, the UNC System has had its 16 universities reviewed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), which accredits colleges in 11 Southern states.
But after friction with SACSCOC over trustee misbehavior and a requirement from state legislators to switch accreditors,1 the UNC System recently joined an effort led by Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis for state universities in Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee to create their own accrediting agency called the Commission for Public Higher Education.
That might sound like a wordy, bureaucratic exercise.
But without accreditation from an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, universities can’t receive federal financial aid for hundreds of thousands of their students.
It’s a tedious process that costs millions of dollars. Conservatives have bristled for years at the process. So in an effort that seems remarkably similar to judge-shopping, they decided to form their own agency.2
HANS TOLD the UNC Board of Governors in a virtual meeting Thursday that forming the agency will take two years and a quarter-million dollars a year in staff time.
“It’s time for higher education to have an accreditation option that’s equally committed to the public interest, an accreditor purpose-built for assessing and improving the public institutions that are the workhorses of American higher education. And it’s time for an accreditor laser-focused on student outcomes,” he said.
“This new accreditor will work exclusively with public universities that want to get back to the approach originally outlined in the 1965 Higher Education Act.
“That’s where the modern accreditation process originated, as a gatekeeper for ensuring federal financial aid funds went to institutions that focused on student outcomes. Unfortunately, this has evolved to become a burdensome stamp well beyond traditional academic boundaries, simultaneously demanding an invasive and costly amount of administrative and compliance documentation while failing to provide a meaningful check on institutions that aren’t serving students well.
“The annual cost to the UNC System varies from year to year because of the cycles but it is well into the millions of dollars. This is particularly hard on our smaller, less-resourced universities,” Hans said.
“There is little common sense in a distant committee attempting a forensic financial analysis of public universities that are independently and transparently monitored by multiple public agencies. And there is little common sense in having closed-door committees impose requirements that bear little relation to the public mission and academic priorities of our universities.”
Hans listed three things he hopes the effort will accomplish:
• “First, a sharp focus on quality and outcomes — the things that matter to students and the people we serve. Less time cataloging inputs, more time measuring results.
• “Second, much-needed transparency in both process and information sharing. The Commission on Public Higher Education will be much more open and eager to share insight and best practices so that member institutions can improve together.
•“Third, and perhaps most importantly, a more streamlined process that does not require thousands of hours, millions of dollars, and duplicative documentation from institutions that don’t have endless resources. Reducing the compliance burden on smaller campuses is a major driver of this effort and should allow for these public systems to reinvest in the academic core.”
Hans said he is “excited” to help build such an agency.
“Higher education is going to face some enormous challenges in the years to come, with public institutions especially called to address shifting demographics, deep disruptions in the world of work and learning, and the need to maintain trust with a skeptical public. We need an accreditor that understands those challenges and is ready to work with us in meeting them,” he said. “… This is what reform, national reform of higher education, looks like.”
SO JUDGE for yourself: Is it an effort to focus accreditation on student success? Or is it judge-shopping for an arbiter with a lower bar?
1 https://publicedworks.org/2023/02/chapel-hill-board-antics-catch-accreditors-eye/; https://publicedworks.org/2023/09/florida-style-bill-would-make-colleges-switch-accreditors/.
2 https://www.theassemblync.com/education/higher-education/unc-system-president-unveils-plans-for-new-accreditor/; https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/accreditation/2025/06/06/emails-shed-light-uncs-plans-create-new-accreditor; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article309378165.html; https://publicedworks.org/2025/07/the-rubric-fication-of-accreditation/.
Leave a Reply