Foes Call Legislation ‘Elitist’ : Stricter Scrutiny Sought for Unaccredited Schools

SACRAMENTO — To receive a doctor of philosophy in sensuality degree from More University in Contra Costa County, all an eager student must do is pay about $6,000 in fees and master such courses as Mutual Pleasurable Stimulation of the Nervous System.

At Feather River University in the Northern California community of Paradise, a seeker of knowledge can obtain a bachelor’s, master’s or doctor’s degree in martial arts for fees ranging up to $1,500.

And Pacific Southern University, which has no full-time faculty members, offers a wide array of degrees in business administration, economics and engineering from a seven-room “campus” in West Los Angeles.

Citing these and other examples, the California Postsecondary Education Commission has concluded that California has become what Bruce Hamlett, the commission’s director of legislative affairs, called “a haven for institutions that offer easy degrees.”

The state also has more than its share of vocational schools that lure students into signing up for federal and state loans and grants, then provide little instruction. One result is that 35% of student loan defaults in the last 10 years have involved vocational school students, according to the California Student Aid Commission.

In an effort to solve these problems, state Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos Hills) has introduced legislation to remove supervision of vocational schools and privatepostsecondary institutions from the state Department of Education and turn it over to a new state agency.

“The problem is the credibility of California colleges and the black eye the good schools are getting because of the . . . diploma mills,” Morgan said.

These schools “have been a stepchild that, frankly, didn’t get a lot of attention from the superintendent,” she added, referring to state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig.

Morgan’s bill would establish a 20-member Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education to license and regulate private postsecondary institutions, especially those that are not accredited. It has passed the Senate and is being considered by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

The Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges accredited 139 California institutions, ranging from little-known California Family Studies Center in Los Angeles to Caltech, Stanford and UCLA. But eight other national associations also provide accreditation for different kinds of institutions.

In addition, there are more than 2,000 vocational schools and degree-granting institutions that are not accredited but are approved, in one form or another, by the state.

‘A Fresh Start’

The Morgan bill “gives us a chance for a fresh start in California,” said Stephen S. Weiner, executive director of the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges.

But opponents argue that the bill represents an attempt by the “elitist” institutions belonging to the association to drive unaccredited, profit-making schools out of business.

“It’s all economics,” said Alvin P. Ross, president of Los Angeles’ Ryokan College and also president of an association to which 62 unaccredited schools belong. “If our 62 schools are forced out of business, then that’s about 15,000 students who might--I emphasize might--go to (Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges) schools.”

The bill initially passed the Senate by a 31-1 vote and is expected to clear the Assembly, but supporters fear it may encounter rough weather when it returns to the Senate for a final vote on Assembly amendments.

The unaccredited schools have clout with some legislators, Morgan said, because “they lobby and they give campaign contributions.”

Some of the motivation for Morgan’s bill came from a report published last spring by the Postsecondary Education Commission, the state’s higher education coordinating agency. The report pointed to weaknesses in the present system of assuring the integrity of California degrees.

“There are a lot of good unaccredited colleges and universities,” said the commission’s Hamlett, “and then there are a lot of others.”

In material prepared for legislative hearings on the Morgan bill, the commission pointed to More University as an example of an “easy degree” institution.

‘Sensual Potential’

More’s 1986 catalogue, the latest available to the commission, listed several degree programs in “sensuality,” with ‘labs” and “demonstrations.” In a four to six-week “personal sexual intensive,” costing $2,800, the “student and members of the Sensuality Department faculty examine the sensual potential of the individual, with the goal of expanding sensory awareness in all areas of life.”

Efforts to learn more about this unusual institution were unsuccessful.

A man who identified himself only as “Marty” answered More’s phone and said the university is run by “a group of people who’ve been together a long time,” that there is no campus and that classes are held “around the Bay Area.” He offered to have Registrar Linda Morgan call back with additional information, but she did not.

Feather River University, the martial arts school, was approved by the state Department of Education under a provision of the current law that exempts religious institutions.

“We are under the religious and philosophical exemption,” Barry Creighton, board chairman and acting president of Feather River, said in a telephone interview. “We’re a group of people united under a common philosophy and our attorney said we qualify” for the exemption from state regulation.

Feather River grants up to 60 units of credit (120 units are needed for graduation) to holders of a judo black belt and accepts an “audiovisual production” instead of a written thesis from a master’s degree candidate, according to the institution’s catalogue.

A few years ago, something called the Church of the Harley Davidson also sought to launch a religiously exempt college on the theory that “riding a motorcycle was a religious experience,” the Postsecondary Education Commission report said. Eventually, the cyclists’ claim was rejected, and that particular addition to the pantheon of higher education was avoided.

Many of the suspect institutions specialize in offering off-campus degrees, in other states and other countries, taught by local part-time faculty. Many of them grant large amounts of academic credit for “life experience.”

The Postsecondary Education Commission has cited Pacific Southern University in Los Angeles as an example of an institution that offers too many degrees with limited faculty and other resources. According to the commission, Pacific Southern “operates a total of 30 different degree programs out of its one suite of offices consisting of three rooms.”

‘Seven Rooms, Not Three’

“Not true, not true,” exclaimed Javat Khazrai, president of Pacific Southern, when contacted by phone. “We have seven rooms, not three.”

Khazrai said most Pacific Southern students live outside California, many outside the United States, and take courses under the supervision of local tutors, who are linked with the Pico Boulevard headquarters by computer.

He said it is “hard to tell” how many students are enrolled at any given time because “it depends on the political and economic conditions in various countries around the world.”

Pacific Southern offers bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. programs in business administration, economics and education, he said, for fees ranging from $1,750 to $2,400 per degree.

Past state efforts to regulate private postsecondary institutions have been hampered by a confusing system in which some schools are “accredited,” others are “approved” and still others are “authorized.”

The state does not attempt to regulate the 139 institutions belonging to the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges but does license 152 private unaccredited postsecondary schools, of which 74 are “approved” and 78 are “authorized”--a distinction that is lost on many educators, not to mention the general public.

The “approved” schools are required by law to provide a course of study “consistent in quality with curricula offered by appropriate established accredited institutions,” although state officials concede that this goal sometimes is not met.

Until recent years, all a school had to do to be “authorized” by the state was to come up with $50,000 in net assets (sometimes in jewelry or automobiles) and file the necessary paper work.

In 1984 legislation authored by state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) these schools were required to meet state standards in 13 separate areas.

Regulations Never Produced

However, the state Department of Education has never produced regulations to implement the 1984 law, so many institutions have been able to evade the requirements, said Hamlett of the Postsecondary Education Commission.

Both “approved” and “authorized” schools are regulated by the department’s Private Postsecondary Education Division, a somewhat forlorn unit that is housed in an abandoned bank branch near the western edge of downtown Sacramento.

Understaffed, inadequately funded and largely ignored by Honig and his predecessors, the Postsecondary Education Commission said in its report last April, the unit has failed to fulfill its regulatory responsibilities.

The report said Honig and his predecessors have been so preoccupied with the problems of public schools that they have ignored vocational and private postsecondary institutions.

Sen. Morgan said in an interview that the Department of Education “should concentrate on K-12, and we should establish a separate agency whose sole responsibility would be postsecondary schools.”

Her bill sets up the California Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education to license and regulate the state’s vocational schools and nonaccredited degree-granting institutions, which have a total enrollment of more than 500,000.

The council would have a staff of about 80 and an annual budget of more than $6 million--more than double the budget of the present unit in the Department of Education. The money would come from fees paid by the regulated schools and from the Veterans Administration, which reimburses veterans for state-approved courses.

The legislation eliminates the distinction between “approved” and “authorized” schools, requiring all nonaccredited institutions to meet the same standards. “Religious exemptions” would be sharply curtailed.

The new council would have authority to examine overseas programs offered by California-based institutions, something that is not done now.

Vocational schools would be required to tell prospective students how many people complete the programs, how many get jobs in the field and what their starting salaries are, among other information.

Supported by Honig

Honig initially opposed the bill but now supports it.

“It’s no great pain for us to lose the unit,” said Joe Holsinger, deputy superintendent for governmental policy. “The job needs to be done. From Honig’s viewpoint, the unit was there, he was willing to do the job but, however, never got the money to do it.”

But the bill has opponents. Among the most vocal is state Sen. Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), who is annoyed because the “elitist” institutions accredited by the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges are excluded from state regulation.

“This is a very large fight,” Stirling said. “The issue is--should a small number of private institutions that belong to (the Western Assn.), with their hidebound, Ivy League mentality and their underemployed faculty, be allowed to operate a closed shop?”

Graduates of non-accredited colleges and universities “don’t become the Brahmins of California,” he added. “They’re real working men and women, who usually have to go to school at night. We should not, as a matter of sound social policy, support a bill that makes it harder for these schools to stay in business.”

Morgan said she did not include Western Assn. members because “there haven’t been as many complaints” about those schools and because “I didn’t want to take on the whole world.”