Corruption in academic accreditation

students above the number they were authorized to take in. The department can not even remove colleges from its list of certified institutions without going through a protracted withdrawal process—even when, as in Tri-Valley’s case, fraud charges have been brought against them.

Such changes can be made only through either a multiyear regulatory process or through legislation. DHS cannot lobby for legislative action and has not sought to require accreditation among Sevis participants. Indeed, the department has argued that such restrictions could harm small operators.

A group of U.S. senators this month asked DHS officials to visit colleges deemed high risk within the next year. Legislators were also outraged at violations found during earlier raids on English-language schools. But they have not changed the system.

Without eliminating the loopholes that allowed Tri-Valley to thrive, such as the ambiguity in work rules and the ease with which students can transfer from legitimate institutions to shoddy ones, shuttering one questionable college does little to prevent another from simply springing up in its place, competing for students who, at the very least, are interested in a cheaper and easier route to an American degree and an American job.

Chief among the system’s shortcomings, many argue, is the fact that institutions like Tri-Valley can receive certification at all.

“That’s where the inherent flaw is,” says Ronald B. Cushing, director of international services at the University of Cincinnati. “What are we doing, closing down these institutions years later, when they shouldn’t have been allowed in the system in the first place?”

Cushing and others say that only accredited colleges should be allowed to take in foreign students, or that certification should include a more-rigorous peer review, akin to accreditation. The retired police officers and FBI agents who conduct site visits, they say, are not equipped to assess an institution’s academic quality. But immigration officials have resisted efforts to require accreditation.

Bad actors affect more than just the students they enroll.

The closing of Tri-Valley has raised doubts in India about the quality and oversight of American higher education, and further closures could damage that reputation even more. Indian newspapers painted the Tri-Valley students as victims. After some were made to wear electronic-monitoring devices, headlines screamed, “We are being treated like dogs” and “Uncle Sam wants you to wear a radio collar.”

If families in India—which sends nearly 105,000 students to the United States each year—lose faith in the system, that could affect all higher-education institutions in the United States, not just the unaccredited operators.