BOCA RATON, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke Thursday in Boca Raton to announce the establishment of a new higher-education accreditation agency.
During the news conference at Florida Atlantic University, DeSantis introduced the Commission for Public Higher Education, or CPHE, describing it as a new accreditor that will “upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels.”
”It will provide institutions with an alternative that focuses on student achievement rather than the ideological fads that have so permeated those accrediting bodies over the year," DeSantis said.
Florida in 2023 filed a lawsuit in federal court pitting the state against former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and others over Florida’s free choice, or lack thereof, regarding college accreditation agencies.
Even back then, DeSantis presented rhetorical arguments of agenda vs. agenda in calling the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges — aka SACSCOC, Florida’s post-secondary accreditation agency — an “accreditation cartel” that he claimed was trying to “stick their beak” in Florida’s business and seeking to restrict the state’s federal education funding on ideological grounds.
Last October, Cardona got Florida’s claim dismissed. At latest, the lawsuit is on appeal.
DeSantis said Thursday that the establishment of the CPHE was only possible under the Trump administration, seeing as it would need the approval of the U.S. Department of Education.
“We need these things approved and implemented during President Trump’s term of office. The reality is, if it doesn’t get approved and stick during that time, you can have a president come in next and potentially revoke it, and they can probably do that very quickly. If we get this done, we do the trial run that we have to do, we get approval, it starts to stick all the states — and I think almost all the states in our region are going to be favorable to this — then you could develop a track record, then it’s almost impossible for a future federal administration to try to upend the apple cart," DeSantis said.
Florida State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said his team would be joined in establishing the CPHE by the University of North Carolina System, University System of Georgia, University of Tennessee System, Texas A&M University System and University of South Carolina System.
"At this moment for us in higher education, we want to make the important changes that need to be made that have become evident over the last several years where we are recommitting and refocusing on students, refocusing in our mission to serve students, to educate students, and to develop knowledge through research. That is our mission. It’s not our mission to be involved in culture wars or political activity, it’s our mission to focus our students and student outcomes,” he said.
SACSCOC on June 16, 2021, signed onto a joint statement declaring its and other groups’ “firm opposition to a spate of legislative proposals being introduced across the country that target academic lessons, presentations, and discussions of racism and related issues in American history in schools, colleges and universities.”
Watch the news conference again in the video player below or by clicking here.
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