“Are you accredited?”
When my colleagues and I opened Mount Liberty College seven years ago, this was the first question we were asked. If we had $1,000 for every time we have been asked it since, our endowment would rival Harvard’s.
And yet, it is a question that wasn’t very relevant then, and one that has become even less relevant since, as I hope to explain in this article.
The answer to the question then, and now, is “No, we are not. Nor will we ever be.”
Mount Liberty is licensed by the state of Utah to issue academic degrees, but the state is only concerned that we are offering our students what they pay us to deliver: a Great Books-oriented curriculum imparted through courses conducted primarily on the basis of the Socratic method — reading and dialogue. The content of those courses and the delivery system we use is a matter of concern only to us and to our students.
Nevertheless, the question is understandable, and we have been at some pains to explain to concerned parents and applicants our negative answer, citing both the academic literature on the subject and the drumbeat of headlines about pressure from accrediting institutions on ostensibly autonomous institutions of higher learning. This combination has produced political and educational calls for reform of the accreditation system. The culmination (to date) of the political aspect is the Trump administration’s threat to the Department of Education, the political entity that governs and enforces the accreditation regime.
Behind that No. 1 question has always been another: “What if I (or my child) graduate from Mount Liberty? What will I do then?” My flippant answer has always been that you will be able to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle in record time, but on the basis of our actual experience, I am now able to provide a perhaps more satisfactory answer: “Whatever you want.”
Let’s look at the evidence for that statement.
Mount Liberty has so far produced eight graduates. Those alumni have qualified for the following post-graduate programs and fellowships:
- Ralston College MA in Humanities (three of our graduates have been admitted to this program)
- Ashland University MA
- Rutgers University MA
- Antioch University MA
- Columbia School of Journalism Writing Seminar at Oxford University
- A Spectator World fellowship
- A fellowship at Encounter Books
Mount Liberty has not yet had a graduate apply to law school, but we have been told by the top law school in our area that non-accreditation will not be a problem. The LSAT is all they care about. And the unaccredited George Wythe University, although no longer operating, did send graduates to a dozen or so law schools, including UCLA, Washington and Lee, Brigham Young University, and the University of Washington. George Wythe University also accomplished the seemingly impossible: it placed graduates at not one, but two ed schools, one of which was Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Our experience has been that graduate schools of education are the least receptive to unaccredited institutions.
The experience of our graduates is not unique. It is consistent with that of other unaccredited institutions. Although Gutenberg College in Eugene, Oregon, is now accredited, during the period of its non-accreditation, it placed graduates at Boston University’s Ph.D. program in Philosophy, for instance. Patrick Henry College in Virginia also operated for its first five years without accreditation and with minimal difficulty.
At the outset, our hope was that there might be an established college that would lead a fight to overturn the accreditation regime entirely. The famously independent Hillsdale College sprang immediately to mind. Or perhaps Ralston, a new post-graduate college with impressive academics (and considerable money) behind it, located in Savannah, Georgia. Or maybe the University of Austin (UATX), founded four years ago to great éclat (and with a reported war chest in excess of $200 million).
Alas, Hillsdale, which has been accredited since 1915 and eschews federal funding, has shown no interest.
Ralston, required by the state of Georgia to become accredited or cease operations, now seeks approval from the accreditation gods. As I write, a communication from Ralston president Stephen Blackwood arrives in my inbox, celebrating the fact that Ralston has become “a Candidate for Accreditation from a federal accreditation body.” Blackwood says, “Although the College has of course awarded graduate degrees since 2022, federal accreditation is a necessary step toward admitting international students, and enabling students to apply for financial aid and transfer credits between colleges.”
AI provides me with this handy description of UATX’s rationale for seeking accreditation:
“UATX (University of Austin) seeks accreditation to ensure its graduates and degrees are recognized as meeting high academic standards, eligible for transfer to other accredited institutions, and eligible for federal student aid. They also believe that accreditation helps to improve the quality of the institution and its programs.”
Can’t do much about the federal aid question (though UATX might ponder Æthelred the Ill-Advised’s experience with Danegeld), but I would have thought that “high academic standards” were UATX’s business, not something to be outsourced to a bureaucrat somewhere — someone who may or may not know anything about teaching. Transferring credits is important, although it is hard to believe that if UATX does its job well, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, say, would not accept a transfer student. Mount Liberty would.
Perhaps someone should set up a transfer portal for academic subjects, like the one the athletes use. “Yes, Mom, I’m following my Medieval Lit mentor to the University of Colorado. It’s a much-better-funded program, so now I’ll get a full ride.”
And why, against all the evidence, UATX should think that accreditation will “improve the quality of the institution and its programs,” when the evidence runs in the opposite direction, is a mystery. UATX president Pano Kanelos, in an interview published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, has already admitted that UATX is hiring administrators to satisfy accreditors. It can only get worse.
UATX might have cited an institutional prejudice of grant-making foundations against unaccredited schools, except that its own experience, and that of (at least) Ralston and Thales College, demonstrates that there doesn’t seem to be much. Mount Liberty has also received some (modest) grants from foundations, including the Utah-based Sorenson Legacy Foundation.
In the final analysis, the validation of a college’s program — particularly in the liberal arts — lies in the ability of its graduates to go on to the post-graduate programs of their choice, or directly into the workforce, if they choose that. We at Mount Liberty have demonstrated the validity of our unaccredited model, as have the other colleges cited above, whether they have subsequently sought accreditation or not.
The fact is that as a useful concept, accreditation died some time ago. Its zombie existence cannot continue. Higher education should welcome a new, unaccredited world.