The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) met today, and will meet tomorrow.
For those who are not super-nerds about policies in higher education, this highly underreported biannual meeting is also highly consequential. Members of NACIQI decide which universities and programs get funding from the federal government. More specifically, they approve or deny accrediting agencies’ “request for recognition”. These agencies accredit universities and colleges, giving them access to Title IV funding. Today NACIQI reviewed the American Bar Association’s (ABA) accrediting body.
This agency, casually titled the “council,” and officially titled the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, accredits 198 law schools. NACIQI’s review was largely scathing. Ultimately, and to no surprise, the committee decided to keep the council’s recognition with a few caveats for tomorrow.
David Barker, the Assistant Secretary for postsecondary education, opened the meeting with an aggressive defense of his involvement with the review of the council, largely due to Donald Trump’s executive order. Some NACIQI committee members, as well as the council itself, had complained his involvement was “highly irregular,” and a “change from previous administrations”, which Barker explained was entirely false. A committee member also wrote previously that Barker was an “autocrat” and that this meeting “would be a Stanlinst show trial.” It was Bob Shireman, appointed by Nancy Pelosi, he’s very active on LinkedIn and Substack.
Barker’s main claims against the council was its breach of the “separate and independent” rule for accrediting bodies, and DEI standards. The council, according to Barker, is too tied to the House of Delegates, which is a rule-making body within the ABA.
David Barker suggested NACIQI should not renew the council’s recognition, in line with Trump’s executive order, because they are not compliant. By the end of the meeting, the motion to reject the council’s recognition failed — with the votes tied, because Jennifer Blum “voted her conscience”. What the committee will ultimately do with the council was tabled until tomorrow. Blum won’t be there tomorrow, while Emilee Reynolds might be, possibly shifting the vote, so there is still a glimmer of hope for the ABA haters.
Accreditation runs like a nonprofit: nothing really happens, and if anything happens at all, it happens very slowly — except multiply that by one hundred, even under Trump’s audacious administration.
Committee member Bob Eitel, a republican appointee, referenced a NACIQI meeting in 2006, where committee members found the council “extraordinarily casual and dismissive” toward the department’s requirements, process, and staff.
Twenty years later, the council was still very dismissive, though Daniel Thies, the council’s representative, argued it is extremely difficult to enforce policies when they are constantly changing. At the end of the meeting, committee member Steven Taylor explained he was on the fence the whole day. But because the council was not humble, because he saw “nothing along the lines today of, ‘we want to comply with full separate and independence,’” he was not in favor of renewing recognition.
After Eitel’s takedown of the council’s attitude, he asked if they planned “to take another approach to DEI through another standard up the road”. Eitel was referring to the council’s now repealed “Standard 206” which required certain political and diversity alignments, asking if they’d follow up with another approach. Thies said “no.”
Eitel then asked why the council wouldn’t just divorce themselves from the department. “Why continue a marriage that nobody really wants here?” There are only five law schools that rely on the council for access to Title IV funds, all other colleges rely on other accreditors for access to federal money.
Daniel Thies responded, with a “again, we respect the department and its rules. We do think historically they have been proven a good bellwether of the quality of an accreditor.” In other words, Thies says for some mysterious reason accreditation holds more power over the American people than just ties to money, as John Adams College students, at an unaccredited school, could certainly attest.
Committee member Jennifer Blum, republican, later agreed with Thies, because “the legal profession — and I am a lawyer — is important enough societally that I actually want there to be regulation.” There are already numerous laws regulating the legal profession. What Blum is vouching for is her oversight specifically.
Thies further explained that if the council lost their recognition, any student who attended a school accredited by the council would not be able to take the bar or practice law in Ohio and Florida. This problem was termed “degree portability” throughout the meeting, insinuating if NACIQI did not recognize the council, an accredited law degree from them would be meaningless in certain states. Eitel suggested those states could change their laws.
A later public comment from law professor Josh Silverstein similarly vouched for “a national legal system” because the “legal profession operates best” that way. Other public comments weighed heavily on “degree portability” in arguing for NACIQI to recognize the council, but Thies potentially later contradicted this portability point by saying this meeting was not about putting down other accrediting competitors. As deputy assistant secretary Jeff Andre argued, “this has nothing to do with portability,” because in Florida there are alternative paths to the bar.
Back to diversity: Zakia Smith-Ellis, democrat, who had just returned from a 10th anniversary in Paris (congrats!), hates to be the “black woman in the room asking about diversity, but I will.” She asked Thies if they are helping law schools train lawyers who can deal with different races. She also asked if there are regulations to help keep the student body diverse, without “actually violating the law.” Theis gave an appropriate response, and David Barker followed up with a comment correcting the premise of Smith-Ellis’ question.
Chairman Jay Greenman later pressed the council on a previous comment by its chair. The comment, from an article on Reuters, was originally read in Barker’s opening remarks: “Council Chair Melissa Hart said during the virtual meeting that the the vote was not a reflection of the organization’s values, but a pragmatic choice intended to preserve a national system of law school accreditation.” In other words, Hart, who is chair of the council for accreditation, believes accreditation requirements are “not a reflection of the organization’s values,” further promoting this idea that the accrediting body is not in fact separate and independent from ABA’s values.
Theis refused to answer Greenman’s questions about Hart’s comments, and when Theis reluctantly passed the microphone to Hart, she likewise refused to comment, because she needed to see the “whole quote in context,” even though she was the one who said it. When Greenman asked her if she believed the quote now, she answered the same way.
The best part of the meeting was when they opened for public comment and a Daron Davis hopped on, a black governance researcher and public scholar, right in front of the golden gate bridge.
They had 31 public commentators, far more than usual, both for and against recognizing the council.
Tomorrow could force NACIQI to confront a question it rarely asks: will it challenge the status quo, even it means taking down a major accreditor? If today’s meeting is any indication, the answer is no.
Ella Dawson, previously Johnson, graduated from John Adams College in 2025, and co-founded the Rostra with her classmate Megan. After working for the National Journalism Center in Washington DC, Ella is now in Utah as a freelance journalist, history teacher, wife, and Mom.
