For-Profit College At Risk Of Losing Accreditation AndAccess To Federal Student Aid

Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) recounted Ashford's explosive growth, arguing that executives had exploitedregulatory weaknesses in the accreditation system.

"From a strictly moneymaking perspective, what I have described is a highly successful model,"Harkin said at the time.

In just seven years, Ashford University has grown to be one of the nation's largest for-profit colleges,morphing from a 300-student Catholic school in Iowa into a massive online institution serving morethan 90,000.

Ashford's explosive growth was a product of shortcomings in the collegiate accreditation system,according to critics: A California corporation purchased an accredited, near-bankrupt Iowa collegein 2005 and used it as a platform to access hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student aid.

Now Ashford is at risk of losing its accreditation, a scenario that would jeopardize the school's abilityto tap into federal student loans and grants -- the source of more than 85 percent of its revenues. 1,according to a letter the commission sent Ashford last week.

Current employees in academics and admissions said they have long been frustrated with theacademic shortcomings identified in the report from the western accrediting association. The reportfound the school suffered from an "under-allocation" of faculty and staff, leaving the school unable toadequately promote student success.

Although Ashford's student population is much larger than major state universities such as OhioState and the University of Texas, it has only a few dozen full-time faculty members.

"A core of about 50 full-time faculty members, most recently hired, for the entire online division ofmore than 90,000 students, is not sufficient to provide leadership and oversight of an academicenterprise the size and complexity of Ashford," the accreditors concluded.

The report from the western accrediting association mirrored many of the findings from a HuffPostinvestigation into Ashford last year, which revealed a breakneck sales culture where recruiters werepressured to enroll as many students as possible in a quest to capture federal student aid revenues."But I must say from an educational perspective, from a perspective of public monies anddisadvantaged students, and from an ethical perspective, I think it's a deeply disturbing model."

Questions about Ashford's accreditation have been looming for years.

In 2005, Bridgepoint purchased the small liberal arts college in Iowa called Franciscan University ofthe Prairies, which was struggling after years of declining enrollment. The report noted that manystudents received limited feedback in online discussion forums that were a critical part of manyclasses.

"Faculty responses to required student posts were often limited to a few words of encouragementand lacking in substantive exchange between student and teacher," the report read.

An Ashford teaching assistant said the limited interaction reflects a disparity in resources forstudents, the majority of whom struggle with basic writing and reading comprehension.

"You'll have 70 students, and one person grading," said the teaching assistant, who declined to beidentified for fear of retribution from Ashford. Because most of Ashford's operations were based inCalifornia, not Iowa, the school began pursuing an alternate accreditation from the WesternAssociation of Schools and Colleges.

After a nearly two-year review process and a site visit this spring, the western association deniedAshford's bid for accreditation earlier this month.

The accreditation denial has triggered additional scrutiny from the Higher Learning Commission,which has put Ashford on "special monitoring status."

Within 30 days, Ashford administrators must submit a report to the Higher Learning Commissionoutlining why the school should remain accredited, given the negative findings from the westernassociation. Based on the new evaluation, the Higher Learning Commission board will decide by nextFebruary whether to continue Ashford's accreditation, issue sanctions or withdraw accreditation.

Ashford could also face "possible termination of status" if the school has not proved it is complyingwith the commission's rule on geographic presence by Dec. For Bridgepoint, owning an accreditedinstitution such as Ashford has allowed executives to more than double corporate revenues over thepast two years and engineer an initial public stock offering in 2009 worth $142 million.

In the year the company went public, Bridgepoint's chief executive officer, Andrew S. Sen. Fordecades, the Higher Learning Commission, the regional consortium of schools headquartered inChicago, had accredited the Iowa college.

There was a brief review after Bridgepoint purchased the school, and a full evaluation visit in 2006.School officials must schedule another site visit with accreditors by early September. Ashfordofficials are planning to appeal and re-apply for accreditation.

Among other findings, the western accreditors pointed to an unusually high dropout rate at Ashford:Between fall 2007 and fall 2011, more than 50 percent of 240,000 students enrolled in the universityhad withdrawn -- a level of attrition that the reviewers found to be "not acceptable."

The review team also pointed to the "relative underfunding of the academic program compared to anemphasis on student recruitment and enrollment- and revenue-growth."

An analysis of staffing showed a disparity between the number of admissions staff and the number ofacademic advisors: Each admissions counselor was responsible for an average of 32 students, whileeach academic advisor oversaw an average of 300 students.

"That size and scale -- 90-plus thousand students -- really requires what we feel should be a moresubstantial infrastructure," said Ralph Wolff, president and executive director of the senior collegecommission of the Western Association of Schools & Colleges. There's a complete conflict there."

WATCH a tour of Ashford's campus:

. In the week since Ashford's parent company announced that a regional consortium of colleges haddenied the school's bid for new accreditation, the company's stock has plummeted more than 50percent.

The review team with the Western Association of Schools & Colleges found that Ashford was notinvesting enough in its academic programs, devoting significantly more resources toward new-student recruitment than educating its current students. "The disproportion between the recruitersand academic support, on its face, did not suggest that there was an adequate primacy of theeducational mission."

U.S. The denial of Ashford's bid also points to a tightening of the college accreditation system, whichhas long been criticized by members of Congress and student advocates as a rubber-stampregulatory process that is ill-suited to protect taxpayer investments in higher education.

In being denied by the accrediting association, Ashford also risks losing its current accreditationwith a Midwest consortium, which has placed the school under more intense scrutiny in the lastweek. Ashford was seeking the new accreditation because the majority of its operations are at acorporate headquarters in San Diego, not the ground campus in Iowa.

Officials with Bridgepoint Education Inc., the San Diego corporation that owns Ashford, declined tocomment beyond a statement laying out Ashford's plans to submit several reports over the next fewmonths to remain accredited.

In a news release from last week, the company said it was "disappointed" in the decision.Management sent out an e-mail last week listing "frequently asked questions" about theaccreditation problems, but it contained only a handful of basic responses that staff were supposedto provide to students, according to a copy of the e-mail obtained by The Huffington Post.

Many hypothetical questions listed in the management email, such as "How does this affect me as astudent?" and "What if I'm not finished with my degree and we lose accreditation?," had no answer.

A current employee who works in Ashford admissions said there have been an overwhelming numberof questions from students about how the accreditation denial could affect their future. "There's noway that you can give those students the individual attention they need."

The current admissions employee said many long-time employees were pleased that the accreditorswere pushing Ashford to improve. "In order to meet the criteria that that they have set forth, itwould slow down our enrollments. But the accreditation was allowed to continue under the newownership.

Bridgepoint changed the school's name to Ashford University, and soon began rapidly recruiting foran online division that was based largely out of the corporate headquarters in San Diego.

Two years ago, the Higher Learning Commission passed a new set of rules requiring schools to havea "substantial presence" in the 19-state region that stretches from Arizona to West Virginia. Clark,received a total compensation package worth more than $20 million, according to securities filings.

At a Senate hearing last year, Sen. But the employee was uncertain how the school would be able tomeet the standards and still provide the returns desired by investors.

"I think it would be an enormous cultural shift," the employee said. And that's what it's all about,right? The investors want to see how many new enrollments you have. The employee said staff havebeen frustrated at their inability to be open with students; instead, they have to give "the samecanned answer" every time.

"If you have a student digging and asking a lot of intelligent questions, all you can do is regurgitatethe same thing over and over again," said the employee, who declined to be identified because of acompany policy that prohibits employees from speaking to the media.

Maintaining accreditation is a key requirement for colleges to be eligible for federal student loanand Pell Grant dollars. "Your decision regarding Ashford University's accreditation statusdemonstrates how our accreditation system should work."

Over the past week, Bridgepoint has been in damage-control mode, issuing a series of publicreleases and internal memos to staff stressing that the school is still accredited with the Midwestorganization, the Higher Learning Commission. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who has pushed for strongerregulations of for-profit colleges, commended the association for its "thorough review" of Ashford'sprograms in a letter last week.

"Accreditation agencies such as yours serve as the gateway to federal funding, and students rely onthe seal of approval you provide," Durbin wrote