With no notice and no debate, the North Carolina General Assembly pushed through a controversial change that will hurt Carolina.
Higher Ed Works recently reported that “as most of North Carolina [were] sifting through 1,400 pages of a new, $30 billion state budget, Sen. Michael Lee slipped a provision from an unrelated bill into HB8 to require North Carolina colleges and universities to change accrediting agencies every cycle.” (.)
This is alarming, concerning, and requires outreach to legislators and the governor to stop it.
In the above video, Dr. Jerry Lucido describes how the NC legislature’s attempt to force an accreditor change on UNC System Schools would be extremely damaging to Carolina and others.
The move appears to be a continuation of NC Senate efforts to push an extremely costly, unnecessary, and burdensome change to the accreditation process on all UNC system schools and such a move could put Carolina’s accreditation at risk.
In May of this year, the Coalition held a webinar to explain the dangers of such a move. . During that webinar experts explained the dangers of forcing this change–along with the pros of staying with the current accreditor. Additionally, Dr. Holden Thorp explained what might be motivating the NC Senate to make such a dangerous move. Here is a clip of that explanation.
What can you do to stop this dangerous, extreme, political and costly action?
Contact Governor Cooper if you do not support the accreditation change requirement in House Bill 8 and ask him to veto House Bill 8 (HB8) where Senator Lee snuck in this requirement.
Contact legislators if you do not support the accreditation change requirement in HB8 and let them know that you would like any veto to be sustained.
This is another “bad look” for the NC General Assembly. It’s a move that reeks of corruption at high levels.
Politicians have no business micro-managing ( or managing ) university affairs.