The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Distance Education Accrediting Commission just happened to be the two agencies whose turn it was to appear before the federal panel on accreditation that met here Tuesday.
It hardly mattered, though, as the discussion before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity had relatively little to do with the two agencies' actual performance or perceived failings (with a couple of exceptions, including how the Southern accreditor responded to academic wrongdoing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
Rather, members of the panel mostly raised systemic issues that reflected the general view that accreditors are not doing enough to push colleges to graduate more students and improve their postgraduation outcomes.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/21/bright-line-indicators-student-outcomes-dominate-discussion-federal-accreditation