SMC

Santa Monica College is one of the major feeders of transfer students to UCLA and is having fiscal problems that threaten its status. As blog readers will know, there is pressure on UC and UCLA to meet transfer student enrollment targets.

From the Santa Monica Daily Press: The years-long failure to arrest Santa Monica College’s enrollment decline and fiscal crisis has endangered the school’s accreditation according to a new warning sent by the institution responsible for evaluating community colleges. The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) notified SMC Superintendent/President Kathryn Jeffery in July that the college had scored in the "at-risk" category on the commission's Composite Financial Index, based on data submitted in the college's 2026 annual fiscal report. Institutions that score at-risk are automatically placed on enhanced monitoring, a designation ACCJC uses to track member colleges' fiscal stability throughout the accreditation cycle.

...[ACCJC Vice President Melynie] Schiel's letter cited four factors behind the at-risk designation: an unresolved structural deficit, marked by expenses exceeding revenue in each of the last three reporting years, from 2022-23 through 2024-25; a significantly unfunded Other Post-Employment Benefits liability with no district contributions over that same three-year span; a 34% decline in the district's ending cash balance over three years; and multiple expired collective bargaining agreements that remained unresolved. The commission required SMC to submit an update describing the actions it is taking to address those factors, and cautioned that colleges that remain on enhanced monitoring for three consecutive years without resolving their fiscal issues could face adverse action from the commission.

The ACCJC serves as the primary accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for two-year institutions across California and the Pacific, overseeing 136 colleges as of 2024. This institutional seal of approval is the critical mechanism that grants member colleges access to federal Title IV financial aid, ensures the transferability of credits, and maintains the essential academic legitimacy required to serve their student populations...

Full story at https://www.smdp.com/santa-monica-college-faces-accreditation-threat-over-financial-crisis/.