How College Accreditors Miss the Mark on Student Outcomes

By Antoinette Flores

Each year, the U.S. Department of Education provides nearly $130 billion in taxpayer money in the form of student grants and loans to help 13 million students attend more than 6,000 colleges. Many of these students, however, will never graduate. And while the students who do not finish are significantly more likely to deal with catastrophic long-term financial consequences, it is all too easy for a college whose students don’t fare well to receive an accreditor’s stamp of approval—and the federal money that comes with it—over and over again, even when student outcomes don’t improve. This report and interactive detail how the nation’s major accrediting agencies—which are gatekeepers to billions of dollars in federal student aid—use, or misuse, student outcomes in judging college quality. By analyzing accreditor policies and practices at 11 main regional and national agencies, reviewing standards, guidance, documents, and annual reports, this report identifies to what extent accreditors hold—and don't hold—colleges accountable for student outcomes.