With Cerritos College going through accreditation review, many scenarios arise as to what will happen when worst comes to worst.
Frank Mixson, Faculty coach of accrediation, said, ” I feel like we’re in a really good place, but you never know how a particular accrediting team will view your college.”
Accreditation is a process that colleges and universities go through every six years to insure an educational standard.
If Cerritos College goes through the worst scenario and loses accreditation, students would have to go somewhere else.
Linda Lacy, Cerritos College president, said, “If (colleges) lose their accreditation, they they are not allowed to award degrees or certificates. The ones up to this point would count, but after they had actually lost it, any courses that the students took after that wouldn’t be able to count for institutions to transfer. Plus, you’re not eligible for financial aid.”
There are four stages that they go through in the accreditation process .
One stage is the recommendations. If a school does not meet the qualification, it will be issued a warning.
The second stage is Order Show Cause, it’s when any college does not cooperate or fails to fix the things it needed to change.
The third one is whether or not accredited status should be taken away.
The last stage is the termination of the college’s accreditation due to its ongoing failure of compliance.
The consequences are not instant, but the schools are on alert.
“OK, you’re on show cause. You have one year to get all these things corrected. And we’ll get them corrected. We’re going to fix it,” Lacy said of such a scenario.
Classes would still be offered, but they won’t count toward universities.
Dr. JoAnna Schilling, vice president of academic affairs and assistant superintendent, thinks it is important for students to know about accreditation.
She is not worried about Cerritos College and won’t think any of these consequences will be reality.
“If you think of it like grading, those four levels would be like earning an A,B,C, or D. Cerritos College expects our accreditation to be fully reaffirmed,” Dr Schilling said.
